Let it be

I don't ever delete posts. Even the bad ones. The really bad ones. I figure I've already said it, and deleting it won't make it disappear. It has already existed, that thought, and nothing I do can make it un-exist.

Still, there is something to be said for regret.

I think I remember beginning a story once, one that seems to have just the vaguest of connections to me right now. The first few lines went something like this:

"Other people liked Deck. That wasn't the problem. Deck's problem was that he didn't like himself. It went farther than that actually. Deck absolutely loathed himself.

Strange then that the barrel of the gun which Deck was holding was not pointed at someone whom he really hated, like himself, but rather at a man whom Deck had not known until thirteen minutes ago. Deck was sure that the man regretted meeting Deck even more than Deck regretted being born..."

Ok, I lied. The first two lines were kind of the same. I ad-libbed the rest. Interesting story though. Man holds up a convenience store, while in a drug/alcohol induced daze. Rest of the time is spent figuring out who he is, and how he got there. Short term and long term answers to both parts of both questions, of course.

Maybe I'll get around to writing it out someday.

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Don't take me too seriously. For the love of God, please don't ever stop shooting me full of holes. I need it. I need to be reminded of how ridiculous I am.

Thank you.

8 Months

I've been pregnant with words on this blog for over 8 months now.

And all of a sudden, I haven't got a thing to say anymore.

Well, a lot of things have been happening, all-of-a-sudden-like. It's as if the universe knows when high school is going to end, and she's picking up the pace as we rush towards the finale. Just me and my universe. In this train. Going... well I don't know where my universe is taking me.

She told me it was going to be a surprise. I told her I didn't like surprises. She told me to go to hell.

Surprise!

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I'm sorry for the things I said.
I'm even more sorry for the things I didn't say.
I can't take back the former,
And I can't make up for the latter.

Farewell then.
May this memory rest in peace.

Bridge > Poker

I pulled off a squeeze!

Dummy (North):
A-x spades
x-x hearts

Declarer (me, South):
x spades
A-x hearts
Q diamonds (squeezing trick)

Led Q of diamonds, squeezing West who was defending spades and hearts. West discarded a spade, I discard a heart from dummy. Play the Ace of hearts from South, transfer to Ace of spades, last spade is good as well, for 3NT on the nose. Of course, the beautiful part of the squeeze play is that when it's set-up correctly, it's failproof. Had West discarded a heart, I would have discarded a spade from dummy, transfered to the Ace of spades, and played out the last two winning hearts in South. (West had something like 9-x of spades, K-x of hearts, for his last four cards.)

90+ duplicate MPs.

Best hand of bridge I've ever played.

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Ok, it's 3:17 AM, cut me some slack.

What a Difference a Day Makes

Dear God,

I take it back. You rock.

Sincerely,
Cody

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I wonder if anyone saw the haggard, unclean, and unshaven Chinese boy as he walked out to his mailbox today. I wonder if anyone saw the expectation in his face, the fear in his eyes. I wonder if anyone heard his heart pound when he saw the oversized envelope leaning lazily against the inside of his mailbox. Maybe someone heard the fleeting joke that ran through his head:

"God, they sent me the deferral in a big, fat envelope just to mess with me."

He didn't want to open it. More than anything else in the world he did not want to look. He didn't want to lose that comforting blanket of not knowing. He'd been wrapped in it for so long, and the world without it was so bare and cold.

Jack Burden looked. Well, he looked too.

-------------

I still don't believe it. How the hell could I? After the initial shock and amazement, the most predominant feeling now is one of immense gratitude.

No matter how much I may have complained about my so-called problems, my runs of bad luck in cards and in life, right now, finally, I see how damn lucky I am.

God is the only one who can really know whether or not I deserve to be as lucky as I am. God knows, but God doesn't like to intervene. Princeton, for some reason, thinks I deserve it. You have no idea how grateful I am to them. Not just for accepting me, but for believing in me, especially when I had no way of believing in myself. Heck, they're willing to put up $29,000 a year for that belief, in someone they've barely even met.

But they're not the reason I've come this far. Princeton is the next step in my life, but you guys have helped me and pushed me along for every single step of the way up until now.

Thanks to my parents, for putting up with me, and for being there; maybe you didn't always want to be there, but you had to be, and you were.

Thanks to my friends. You know who you are. For being smarter than me, in life if not in school. For believing in me when I know I didn't deserve it. For being some of the most generous, good-hearted, and caring people in the world. For keeping me firmly grounded when I needed to be, for making me listen when I didn't want to, and for shaping me into the person that I am.

Thanks to my teachers. A lot of you have told me that I make your jobs easier by being a good student, but the truth is, I'm a good student only because of the great jobs that you have done. Thank you for caring about my education, oftentimes more than I did about it.

I have come this far because of all of you. Now it is my turn to show you that your faith in me has not been unwarranted. I can let myself down at times, but I refuse to let other people down. I don't have that right, to waste something that's not mine to begin with.

-------------

Dear Cody,

You're welcome. Do us proud. We know you will.

Sincerely,
Everyone

Lucky

Dear God,

Not to question the whole grand plan and what not, but dude, wtf?

Sincerely,
Cody

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I don't think I can handle more than another day of this waiting for my ED letter. I wish I bit my nails or something. When you don't have any nervous habits, like me, you just kind of sit around and wait for something to happen. Me, I'm waiting to explode.

::sigh::

I can't get in. I wouldn't freakin' deserve it if I did. I am still absolutely convinced that I have yet to do a single thing in my life that would merit something this good happening to me. Way to not find a cure for cancer, asshole.

Deferred. Deferred. Deferred. The word just rings out with a silent boom inside my head. More hurried applications. More making things up and catching up at the last second. More last minute and half-baked. More being the same old lazy and pretentious me that I've been for the past two years. More not living up to myself. More dashed hopes, ruined chances, missed opportunities, and silent screams into smothering pillows.

I want to pray, but like I said, God probably has better things to do with His time, even though He sorta is timeless.

-------------

It's the same feeling in poker. You wake up in the BB with aces, get raised, reraise, and the other fellow pushes in preflop. You call, a little reluctantly, since this is your entire bankroll right here. It's not as much as it should be; you haven't played as well as you could have. Too late to change that now, and for whatever it's worth, it's there sitting in front of you, but a little out of reach now since it's in the middle of the pot. Your man flips up kings, and you want to close your eyes before this flop but you can't.

2-5-7, rainbow.

You begin to hope, not daring to believe just yet, but with each passing second you want it to be so, you want it to be true, that you could actually win this pot. The sheer audacity of the thought shocks you and scares you. You're still stuck in awe when the turn card comes.

A blood-red King of hearts.

And before you even knew you had hopes, they're crushed. Into a fine powder that's blown away with the wind. What's left is nothing, and that is the worst feeling in the world. Pure emptiness. When you can't even see the glimmer of a hope. But there's still one more card to come.

This time you really don't look.

...

Determination

Red light. Damn. I'm not even in a hurry to get anywhere, but damn anyways. I hate being stuck in traffic. I feel my life just wasting away, with every monoxide-filled breath I take. Plus, it's enforced idleness. I like being lazy; I hate being made useless.

A flicker of movement. Something in the bottom corner of my left eye. That's my better eye. One of the most memorable things any medical professional has ever told me was what my opthamologist (he may have just been an optometrist, actually, but the difference escapes me now) told me during an exam two years ago.

"That right eye has gotten a lot worse."

And everytime I put my contacts lenses in, I think of that statement. It doesn't even mean much, but it's stuck. I'll be eighty years old and blind, but I'll remember that line. Wonder what else I might remember.

I turn my head now to look. Remember that scene from 2 Fast 2 Furious when Paul Walker drives while staring at Eva Mendes and not the road? I've been practicing that. Why, sane people ask me? Why not, I retort? Do you have a deathwish, they come back with? Not if I get good at it.

There's a tiny little fly on my window. The inside of my window, after I close in and notice his feet are sticking outward onto the glass. I lower my window ever so slightly, and perhaps tasting his imminent freedom, he crawls slowly up to the edge of the window and flips himself over. I close my window, expecting him to find new and more exciting company than I soon enough. But he sticks around though, there on the outside of my driver-side window. His little orange fibers that passed for legs somehow hold him there.

Green light. Go. Go. GO. There is this evolved sense of urgency attached to green lights; suddenly life starts moving again. He's still there, my new little insect friend.

Like a lizard, I keep one eye on my speedometer and one eye on him. Five miles per hour. Nothing but a slight breeze for him, and I imagine that he's probably pretty comfortable out there. Ten miles per hour. Still leisurely enjoying the wind in his... antennae? Fifteen miles per hour. I can't believe the car in front of me is going so slowly. Twenty miles per hour, and I see that his wings are getting tickled now by the wind. Twenty-five miles per hour. Thirty. Thirty-five. He's really holding on now. Fourty. Fourty-five. Why didn't he just let go already? What the hell is so important about holding on, to something which could not possibly have any significance for him? Fifty. Fifty-five. The wind must howling at him now, tearing at his feeble grip. Maybe it's like a roller coaster. Maybe he's out there holding on for dear life and having a hell of a time doing it.

And all of a sudden, he's gone. Flicked off by the unsympathetic hand of the laws of physics.

Maybe he's got himself a good story to tell his buddies now.

Maybe he knows why we hold on to these things, these things in our lives which one can never tell if it's worth holding on to or not. Maybe he knows something of loss, of pain, of sorrow, and of regret. Or maybe he is just a fly.

And maybe we are just fools.

La Vie est Belle!

(under construction)

Ok, no really that was the whole post.

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Brevity, thou art my goddess.

If at first you don't succeed... ah hell who cares?

Who cares?

It's a very dangerous question to be thrown around. Once it starts, it's also very hard to stop. However, there is hope. There is one form of the question which can be asked without incurring any of its ill-fated side-effects.

Buddha taught that all suffering in this world comes from desire. Fundamentally, even if one wished to end suffering in the world, that desire to end desire is itself a desire. What we need then, is to stop caring.

Sounds horrible doesn't it? But drop some of those negative connotations your parents and your society have shoved up your ass. You don't need to care. Worrying, even about important things, is one of the most useless ways to use your time and energy.

Yoda was a Buddhist. A damn good one too.

"Do or do not, there is no try." The significance in that statement is not the usually misunderstood interpretation that you only get one shot so you better do it right. Rather, the emphasis is on the actual act of doing. Shut up and stop bitching. Or, shut your mental bitching if you're not doing it aloud. Nike sucks, but "Just do it."

Don't just have a desire to do something. Desire leads to the dark side, if we wish to continue this Star Wars analogy. All types of desire. Even a desire to do good. Instead, the only way to do good is (rather ironically) to just do good. Do not think about it. Do not plan it. Do not desire it. It should happen naturally. Just do it.

I'm writing this because I had a rare little bit of spiritual enlightenment last night. Oh the things you'll start thinking about when the lights are off and you're alone. I began to worry about all the things I had to do in the next few days, all my obligations, all my college applications, all the Mu Alpha Theta things, just... everything. And just when it became almost too much, too much to think about, I had a... well I'm not sure what. A moment. Nothing happened. That was what was special about it. I had a moment of... nothingness. And I became very peaceful, the type of peace that comes about only in complete emptiness. And the very next thought that popped into my mind was very simple: whatever I had to do, I would do.

Ponder that if you wish. I have. It is enough. Enough for any challenge, any clamor for your attention, any incessant nagging doubts in your mind, and any voices of disquiet. All those "but what if?"'s that used to be barriers, they will become like sand on a beach to the ocean of your existence. Existence is enough. Whatever it is, do it. Every moment is so rare. Treasure it by using it.

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Maybe this isn't heaven, but it sure as hell beats where I was before.

80th Birthday... Sort Of

Well, it's post number 80. But to call it a birthday would signify that each post was somehow so far removed from the adjacent ones that it deserved to be accorded its own short-lived era of time.

Or perhaps I'm just schizophrenic enough to divide the past 8 months into roughly 80 different episodes. With all the mood swings I've had I might as well be a woman. Wait.

:: takes a piss standing up ::

Nope, still a man.

Just a very... erratic man.

I remember from some ancient piece of an otherwise long-forgotten vocabulary lesson from an English teacher of mine who by now is most likely dead that very phrase. Actually, it had been part of a test, one of those fill in the blank with one of the given choices type dealies, where it was "... was a very _________ (erratic / eccentric) man." I remember this question so vividly because I was the only one in the class who got it "right." The teacher was so frustrated that no one else had put "eccentric" that we spent a whole day going over this single question. I spent the whole day smirking and napping at everyone else.

Later, I learned that erratic was acceptable, just not "good English." Well damnit, who cares about "good English?" I have friends who find it difficult/amusing to say they are doing good at everything from school to relationships; I don't mind them and they don't mind me when I do mind them enough to correct them.

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The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Blessed are the SL's for they shall inherit the 7's

mozismyquarry: God wrestles ib gods?
mozismyquarry: since when?
FreshPokerOrange: well you have to ask first
FreshPokerOrange: and when He wins, ask Him to do us a favor
FreshPokerOrange: or, if He doesn't win, we can always worship a golden statue of dr Y or something

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I suppose I could be a little more productive right now.

Bah, as a friend once said to me.

Bah.

Can't Stop Falling on My Ass

I can't do this anymore.

It was easy at first. Oh so easy. One wasn't enough. Two, still nothing. And before you can stop to think, you've already committed yourself in a thousand different directions. Mu this, IB that, and somewhere in between, I have to squeeze out enough time to fail Calc. III tests.

I bet Rain $5 that I got less than 50% on our latest test.

I'm already spending that money in my head.

I didn't know what I was getting myself into. How the hell could I know?

So now life is nothing more than one continuous exercise in crisis management. I have just barely enough time to deal with each urgent problem that comes up. My life feels in many ways like one big rolling blackout; some parts get ignored when momentarily more important things come up. And it doesn't seem like much of a problem, but it is. There is nothing more painful than being ignored. In the long run, the damage may be irreparable.

But I can't admit it. Not really anyways. Whining here doesn't count. It isn't resolution. It isn't freedom. It's a quick loosening of a few chains. Fleeting feelings of responsibility-less-ness.

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Grit your teeth, put on your best dogged grin, and get your ass back in the saddle.

You're not done yet.

Not to Steal My Own Thunder but...

Who needs to do Chem IA planning (a)'s anyways when you're 17?

Hell, I should be watching an R-movie or something.

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"I wish you'd come with me."
"Busy busy busy."
"I know, but couldn't you just spare two little hours for a movie?"
"Busy busy busy."
"Fine, I don't like you either."
"Did I say that?"
"You sure as hell never say the opposite of that either."

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Do these little dialogues make any sense? Anyone? God, are you there? It's me, Cody.

Of course You're there. The real question is, am I here? Hard to tell really. If I were here, wouldn't I be at least slightly more attached to here, wherever here is? Truth is, I'm better than just a chameleon. I don't just fit in to one place at a time. I'm a teleporting chameleon. I will fit in everywhere all at once. How do I know I can do this? Because I fit in so well that I disappear. Right out of sight and out of mind. I've been looked through and looked past so many times I take eye contact for granted.

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I see you and you see me, but it's really just a terrible misunderstanding.

Happy 16.99178644763860369609856262833676th Birthday!

For all you super clever people, the trick now would be to figure out what day my birthday is on, given I posted this the night of November 9th, 2005.

Oh man, this will either be the greatest, or worst Mighty Mu ever. I hate mediocrity. Either do a damn good job, or crash and burn.

Entropy would say, eventually, I'll crash and burn.

Mom would say, eventually, I'll crash and burn.

You would say, eventually, I'll... you get the picture.

Do you really need people to believe in you first, before you succeed? Or should you have to give them a reason to believe in you first? I think a little blind faith at certain times can go a long way. Buddha knows I'd like some right now (ok, no self-respecting Buddhist anywhere would ever make that sort of statement, just so you know).

Life is like a box of chocolates. A box of some good, some bad, some surprising, some disappointing, some that make you want to cry for joy, some for sorrow, some for regret, some for redemption, and also some poison chocolates. There might even be a little piece thats covered in chocolate but is really a small bomb that will blow up once you put it in your mouth, after which you'll have a beautiful collection of straight and pearly teeth... in your skull.

Ok, maybe Rush Hour 2 wasn't THAT great...

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And now the purple dusk of twilight time
Steals across the meadow of my heart
High up in the sky the little stars climb
Always reminding me that we’re apart

You wandered down the lane and far away
Leaving me a song that will not die
Love is now a stardust of yesterday
The music of the years gone by

Sometimes I wonder why I spend
The lonely nights dreaming of a song
The melody haunts my reverie
And I am once again with you

When our love was new
And each kiss an inspiration
But that was long ago
And now my consolation
Is in the stardust of a song

Beside the garden wall
When stars are bright
You are in my arms
The nightingale tells his fairy tale
Of paradise where roses grew

Though I dream in vain
In my heart it will remain
My stardust melody
The memory of love’s refrain

My Advice: KISS

No, I'm not telling you to go out and randomly kiss people.

Would you listen to me if I did?

You never listen to me.

I never listen to me.

Therefore, you and I, we're the same person.

Logic.

Terrific.

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Keep
It
Simple,
Stupid

Advice that goes a long way. And it's cheap. Not entirely free though. What should I charge you for it? A few moments of your time is enough I guess. That's all I can reasonably assume that you'll be willing to pay me. Hey, you're here already aren't you?

Don't you wish things were different?

Misplaced Urine

Let's just get one thing straight. Chinese people are not a minority. We are the plurality of the world's population. One out of every five babies born is Chinese. With all that being said, I attended Swarthmore College's Discovery Weekend 2005 this past weekend, as part of a minority recruiting program.

Hey, I can't complain too much when someone's willing to go all-expenses-paid on my ass.

Saturday morning, 10:30 flight. Get to the airport and get to my Southwest gate with an hour to spare. Bust out the SL History IA primary source: Communist China & Arms Control, A Contingency Study, 1967-1976. Awesome reading, nuclear weapons and such. A few minutes later, a young Chinese woman sits down across from me. A few minutes after that, she asks me if I'm going for "the college thing." Teenagers, we can't express ourselves in anything but vagaries. Specifics terrify us. I didn't even ask her her name until we were almost on the plane. Guess who was sitting a row behind us? Young Hispanic man from East Lake H.S. World's a little too small for my tastes, but everybody turned out to be super cool.

Read/napped on the plane ride. I can do both at the same time. Get to Philly, walk through the world's longest jetway, and find that we have to hoof it two terminals over from E to C, where the Swarthmore reps were. Wait maybe 10 minutes, most of which I spent wondering whether or not I have enough time to find a bathroom. Too late, van is here. I get to ride in the front seat, since I was the last person to get on. Best view in the house, not nearly as crowded. Not much to see though, mostly highway traffic and off/onramps until we get to the campus. Beautiful place, lot of greenery, lot of nice houses, lot of cloudy skies and mud as well. Checked-in, got acquainted, and felt rather stood up as my host didn't show. He was in Philly visiting an aunt (actually his cousin's mother's sister, but English doesn't work too well with relationships). A friend of his finally did manage to find me, and we trekked to the dingiest dorm building on-campus. Put my bags down, and could finally relax.

The people in the hall were all super awesome. My host was an international student from Peru; his roommate was a tall, redheaded American. They have a weekly radio show, Sundays at 2 AM to 4 AM, on WSRN Swarthmore radio, playing jazz. I can honestly say that the consensus among us "specs" (prospective Swarthmore students) was that the host- and roommate-matching at this school was amazing. The dynamics between everybody just clicked, beautifully. Everybody was completely at ease with one another; hell, even I fit in pretty well. Anyways, we sat in the small little double, drying off and soaking in the sweat and the dirty laundry. Dinner was in Sharples, the only dining hall on campus (Quakers had this thing about wanting everyone to eat together). Let's just say, the grub was far from mediocre. But I was hungry, so a cheeseburger and some bad imitation curry chicken managed to win a minor victory over the forces of my hunger.

Post-dinner activities were better, though this was not apparent to me at first. At first we just sort of sat around, my roommie spec and me. He was from Miami actually, so best of luck with Wilma's aftermath. Around 9:30, we headed over to a charity "Casino Night," sponsored by the African-American student organization. Ironically, this was to benefit victims of Hurricane Katrina. I made a $5 donation, and played Bingo to begin with, since all the other tables were full. Yeah, I felt old too. Craps was ridiculous; all bets paid 1:1. I just alternated between Odd, Even, 1-18, and 19-36. Lost 1 chip, out of 15, after a handful of spins. Finally managed to get a seat at a blackjack table, thinking I'd be able to recoup something at least (there was going to be an auction using the play chips we earned). Lo and behold, this wasn't the sort of normal casino blackjack I was expecting. We didn't play individually against the dealer and get paid our own bets back; we each anted up into a pot, and the overall best hand won. I could live with this, only the anteing wasn't even consistent. In the end, I just gave up. Never trust other people to run a casino, Cody.

Well, one good thing did come out of that whole episode. Actually, whether or not you think it was good will depend on who you are. As it so happened, our dealer was headed over to a frat party then, and my spec buddies and I, with nowhere better to go and no desire to go to bed, decided to follow. No one stopped me at the door (they stopped the other specs I had gone with; for some reason, I guess I look more mature or something). We got downstairs, and the bar was flowing pretty damn freely. Large 16-oz plastic cups of beer, plus smaller cups of Blue Stuff (that's the name we'll use for now). When I asked the Asian guy at the bar what they were serving, turns out the Blue Stuff was equal parts vodka, Blue Gatorade (yes, Blue is a flavor), and Sprite. Pretty damn good stuff, I'd say. I had 2 cups of that while my roommate had a few beers.

The place was pretty crowded, and everyone was more drunk than they thought they were. Some girl bumped into us, and spilled her Blue Stuff down her blouse. She started freaking out, claiming we had hit her and knocked her drink over. I think I offered to lick it off of her. I think her boyfriend heard her yelling and led her away. My memory is somewhat hazy on this part of the night; what can I say, I was drunk.

"From two cups of Blue Stuff?" you ask.
"No, I had a beer too."
"That was enough to get you drunk?"
"Well..."

We decided to leave soon; a fight had semi-broken out, and things were getting somewhat too rowdy. A junior Swattie had been telling us his opinion of Swarthmore for the last hour or so. Every other word was "fucking."

"This school is fuckin' awesome fuckin' yeah... fuckin' all the fuckin' chicks fuckin' so desperate... fuckin' so much fuckin' booze... I FUCKIN' LOVE IT HERE!"

Yup, that was enough to convince me.

Meanwhile, for some reason unbeknownst to myself, I had gone up to the bar, jacked the bottle of vodka, and started downing cups of the stuff. Let me tell you, nothing is better for a sore throat. Also, nothing keeps you warmer. I don't know why I like vodka; it's one of the few alcoholic beverages I've developed a taste for. Anyways, I don't quite remember walking back to our dorm room. I do remember my roommate relieving himself in a bush from the sidewalk.

Personally, I pissed on the floor when I woke up two hours later and went to the bathroom, because we all know how small urinals become and how hard it is to aim when you're having difficulty standing.

But I slept great.

Progress

How eager we are to grow up, and forget our childishness.

How soon we would like to forget who we were, in the name of who we'll become.

And maybe you stop to think about what you're leaving behind. Maybe it strikes you, for however brief a moment. Maybe everything freezes, for that instant.

And then life throws another punch at you, and you'd better be ready.

So when will it all stop? Do we ever get to call the whole thing off? Do we ever get to say, "Look God, just give me five damned minutes without having to think about where I have to go afterwards, ok?"

It's not His fault, I guess.

Reap what you sow. Goes around comes around. Maybe you never made time for other people. Or, maybe you always made time for other people. Either way, maybe no one will make time for you.

Existence is selfish. The urge to cling to life. To get everything that's coming to you. Socialism doesn't work because it violates the basic nature of man.

Progress.

New is better than old. What you might have will always be better than what you had. How can you beat possibility? How can memory stand up to hope, however distorted or misplaced they might be, respectively?

The past, a memory. The present, a reality. But the future...

... the darkness full of dreams yet to come.

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Live to see the end.

Are You Giving Up or Letting Go? I Dunno, Let's Move On

"What's the difference?"
"Between what?"
"Between giving up on something for whatever reason, and letting go of something you know you can't hold on to."
"Giving up implies you're not willing to do whatever it is that you would need to do to hold on to something."
"And what if you are willing to do it, but you don't know how?"
"Well, if you really did want to do it, then you'd figure out how."
"Ok, so what if I figure out how to do it, but it turns out that what I'm trying to hold on to doesn't really want to be held on to?"
"May I take it then that we're speaking about a certain person?"
"I guess I shouldn't have said 'what.' "
"It's ok, we'll just take it to mean the relationship you have with that person."
"So what do you think?"
"It's a toughie, but I think you need to tell that person exactly how you feel."
"What if you don't think she'd understand?"
"I see now we've progressed from a 'what,' to a 'person,' to a 'she.' "
"The magic of evolution."
"Touché."
"I'd really like to hear what you think."
"I think you need to put your trust somewhere external to yourself. You've gotta either trust her, or trust fate, or trust your voodoo gods, or whoever. But you can't control it yourself. You'll kill yourself trying to."
"And what if what happens isn't what you would have wanted to happen?"
"Then you'll have to learn to deal with disappointment. But you're a poker player; what's another bad beat, even if it is about some broad?."
"She isn't just some broad."
"That's not what I meant."
"I know what you meant. I just didn't like it."
"Tough."
"Thanks."

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Aimlessly

He hated looking at his watch. He couldn't avoid it, but he could hate it. He hated staring at the thin, inconsequentially thin figure of the second hand marching grimly around the face, ticking off the moments which came and would never come again. Time was a bitch, Deck thought.

He tried his best to look at his watch less and less. He tried to avoid being seated anywhere within view of a clock. He tried to ignore the ticking of the watch of the guy seated next to him at the table, whether it was real or imagined.

He got better at it gradually. He started waking up at 12:47 PM on the nose every day, and decided to donate his alarm clock to Goodwill. He ate dinner everyday at 5:15 PM sharp, since Subway's 2 footlong sandwiches for $8.99 deal started at 5 PM and that was how long it took him to walk to the restaurant. He saved the second sub for breakfast, which he usually ate at around 4 or 5 AM. He went to bed as soon as he finished eating his breakfast sub (usually a sweet onion chicken teriyaki on honey oat bread, with lettuce, tomatoes, olives, pickles, and jalapeno peppers). Sometimes, he would brush his teeth. Most of the time, he just comforted himeself with the fact that nobody ever came to see him anyways, so no one would ever notice or care.

-------------

Online poker was not the occupation Deck had gone to MIT to prepare for. But he didn't know why he went to MIT anyways, so it really didn't matter. The whole thing had been very accidental, and Deck felt like he had somehow just woken up one day, and found himself living in Boston. He remembered half-heartedly filling out his application, and turning in some sort of generic essay (or maybe a couple of generic essays) beginning with the words "I wasn't really sure what to write for this essay, so..." Apparently, somebody at MIT was trying to get fired, because Deck soon found out that he wasn't the only one in his class who didn't really belong there. It wasn't that he wasn't smart. He just wasn't brilliant. He had no outstanding traits whatsoever. He did nothing better than anyone else. Everything was easy for him, but he wasn't especially good at anything. Oh, he ended up graduating, but neither he nor MIT felt like either had gained anything of value from the other after four years.

And so it was that after he left the most prestigious technical university in the world, he found himself profoundly and utterly without direction. He had no overwhelming desire to do anything. The few truly brilliant folks he had met in school did nothing to inspire him; they had dismissed him as being just another bright young fellow who lacked the extra something special needed for success, and so he had dismissed each of them as being just another asshole who didn't and couldn't give an honest shit about him. But even if he wasn't inspired or motivated, he could still be hungry. The question of what to do for money led him naturally to the solution which kept him fed and occupied now.

Poker came as easily to him as everything else in his life had. His temperament was especially suited to the game. Natually emotionless and introverted, he couldn't give off tells if he tried. Some of the more overzealous types took this as a sign that he was trying too hard, and in trying to take his money, lost considerable portions of their own stacks before they realized that Deck really was as dead calm and serious as he looked. The other guys just didn't notice, or if they did, didn't know what it was they had noticed. He was just as calm when he took his bad beats. They were inevitable, but he didn't mind them all that much. Probably because he didn't mind anything all that much, an attitude which had gotten him pretty far in life thus far by most peoples' measures, and would probably have carried him even farther had he never met her.

...


-------------

If a certain friend tells me he wants to rape a certain other acquaintance of mine, am I obligated to tell her?

Poker, Because There Really is Nothing Else

Cash game.

$0.10/$0.20 NL texas hold'em.

8-handed most of the day, 9-handed at some points.

Randy to my right, Raj to my left, with Mike one seat behind Raj. All that means is that I get to pick off Randy's calls (at one point, he had called preflop for about 30 consecutive hands), but also have to avoid being super dumb.

Started off pretty well, I guess. First hand, A-4 suited on the button, call one raise of $0.50 from Raj with about 3 other guys. Flop is A-J-2, with one card of my suit. Raj checks, Mike bets $0.75, fold to me, and I call for $0.75, on the button, with backdoor flush and straight draws. Raj calls too. Turn is an offsuited 3, Raj checks, Mike checks (he regrets this now), and I check, pretty sure my Ace is outkicked, if not worse. River is the 5. I have the second-nuts (the "peanuts" as I like to call it), save for 6-4, which I can only hope no one was fucking around with. Raj checks, Mike bets, I raise, Raj folds, Mike calls, and I turn up the suck-outed straight against his top two pair. About a $20 pot total.

Fold mostly for about 2 rounds, when I get back on the button with 8-5 offsuit. 3 weak calls after the big blind enticed me to make a play at this one, using my position and my image. "Raise, 50 cents more," I announce. To my chagrin, 3 calls total. Flop is Q-5-3, two spades, and all is not lost apparently. Check, check, Vince bet out $0.50. Vince can get creative at times, and he'd bet out here with a lot of hands that can't stand much pressure. I make a value-looking raise for $2 more. Vince folds, saying how he knows I'm going to come over the top of him for a lot of chips on the next card anyways (hehe, it's working, it's working!).

Life is pretty darn good, eh? Fold fold fold fold, and then, bam! K-10 offsuit under the gun. Maybe I was getting bored. I'd folded K-10 twice before in early postion, so I guess I wanted to change it up a little. Standard raise for $0.50, and I pick up 3 or 4 callers (I don't remember, there's always a lot of dead-money calls where they fold after the flop to any pressure). Flop is K-10 (first two cards off, both spades, so I was praying for a nonspade next) -9, all spades. Randy checked to me, and I bet out $2. Mike called, and Vince called (he regrets this now). Turn is my bingo card, K of hearts. Slowly check, pretending as if my A-10 with the A of spades was not so hot anymore. Mike checked, and Vince checked. River was the J of diamonds (Mike regrets this now). I check again, confidently in my mind, and Mike comes out firing for $5, and before the fireworks even start going off in my head, Vince CALLS. Oh boy oh boy, life sure as heck is REAL good. I ponder for a moment, checking my cards again slowly. I have no idea how they'll react to me, but I don't really care. Slowly, deliberately, I raise it, $10 more. Actually, I announced the $10 raise before I even checked my own stack. Turns out, I only had a buck left anyways after that. Mike calls pretty damn quickly, and Vince flipped up his Q-J as he thought about it. Wow, how awesome would it have been for him to call me too? Instead after several seconds, he makes the tough but correct decision to lay down the flopped straight. I turn up K-10 for my full house, Mike, in shock I guess, flipped up A-Q, for the nut straight. In hindsight, I guess he must have thought I was trying to buy the pot, maybe with 3 kings, maybe with a K-high straight trying to avoid a split (he had the A-high straight), or maybe I was pure bluffing. I guess I am capable of it. I'm just crazy like that.

So, that was about a $40 pot. I was up to roughly $46 at one point in my stack. Then the cards stopped coming, and I couldn't shake anybody off of anything. Notably in my memory, my J-J got, among others, a call from K-6 suited, and the flop came K-6-3; later 8-8 got, among others, a call from Randy with 10-7 offsuit, flop came 10-10-3, he bet out $2 (should have noticed and made the weird laydown here) but instead I raised $5 just to make sure, as he went all-in and I folded.

Final hand (by now the cards had gone completely dead), I limp in with J-8 to an almost-family pot (Raj folded), and the flop was J-8-3, two diamonds. One bet of $0.75, Vince raised all-in for $3.40 total, and I reraised another $7 to make sure. Heads-up between us it went, and he flipped up 10-7 for nothing but an inside straight draw. Sure enough, the 9 on the turn (and another one on the river) cost me about a $9 pot.

Oh well. I cashed out for $34, up $24 for the day, and went home shaking my head, certain I could have hit $50 easily if my quality hands had just held up too.

-------------

Joe Sebok, son of Barry Greenstein, on playing online poker:

"There is also something to being able to say, 'Fold, fold, fold, fold, fold, damn it, for the love of all that is sweet on this earth, FOLD!' out loud during a bluff, which is very freeing."

Momentary Sigh of Relief

I had been operating (ok, maybe not operating, more like, living in a state of intense dread) on the assumption that Princeton early admission was due postmarked by October 1st. However, I've suddenly discovered a whole new month, the one they call, "November." Still, I am not left with much leeway, as something known as an Extended Essay second draft is due in mid-October.

Ah, but nothing beats that feeling of having some long-carried burden suddenly disappear. To look up and see the sun again.

It's been a slow news day folks, for me at least. Hence, we present some more Rain-isms. Sorry Rain, but you just make it so easy for me.

"Damnit, that gas pump was leaking on me. I got gas all over my fingers Rain."
"Go home and wash it with soup."
(oh, he definitely said "soup")

-------------

Game over. Insert 2 tokens to continue.

I'm Addicted to You

What? I can't rip a song title once in a while?

I was so desperate on my National Merit application that I wrote about this blog. Now I live in constant fear that someday someone will come asking about it.

Guess I better stop cussing and shit.

Oh but this is fun to keep up, isn't it? Besides beating the heck out of doing IB homework, I also get to practice sounding and writing like an idiot. My God, I've just realized, this blog is the reason for my decline in language skills. Soon, I will begin drooling and whistling incoherently, even though I don't know how to whistle.

I can't keep up with everything. I just can't. It's like putting George Bush into a ghetto.

"Like the black people, damnit!"
"I can't! I just don't know how!"
"We'll shoot your father if you don't hug at least one black person."
"No daddy, NOOOOOO!!!!"

Now, let's all take a moment to pray for those affected by Hurricane Katrina, especially that guy who made off with about 37 Ecko t-shirts. Lord have mercy on them.

Amen.

Comment-Whoring

I wonder where all these little scripts posting comments come from...

Did the digital stork just decide to drop them on my blog's doorstep? If so, well, let's just say Mr. Stork needs a bullet up the ass sometime soon.

In other news, I assert control over my life by choosing to waste my own time. It's really pretty nifty, but I don't recommend it for everyone. You really have to be able to take a lot of mental punishment, because you know in your own head that you're just watching the seconds tick by, waiting for something to happen. Waiting. Waiting. And waiting.

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

And pretty soon, you'll wake up and be dead. Oh, but it's not all bad. No one's going to hold you responsible for anything after you're dead. So really, the trick is to die without dying. To die inside, and still keep on breathing.

Breathe in, breathe out.

Breathe in, breathe out.

Breathe in...

Sprechen Sie Englisch?

Thank the powers that be for in-flight movies... Madagascar being one of the many, many movies played back-to-back on my flight back from Hawaii.

Skipper the Penguin: Hey, quadruped, sprechen sie englisch?
Marty the Zebra: Yeah, I sprechen.
Skipper the Penguin: What continent is this?
Marty the Zebra: Manhattan.
Skipper the Penguin: Hoover Dam! We're still in New York! Dive! Dive! Dive!

Well, at least a few lines of that movie were funny.

But it does bring me to my next point (does "next point" imply I had a first point? either way, I lied), which is the plight of non-well-speaking-English folk in America. You know, dem kids who don't talk good American. I used to be one of them. Until I realized how ridiculous I was. Never again will I mispronounce anything.

Except maybe the word "Bono."

But I digress.

Many of you (how many is many of one person?) know my friend Rain. Well, Rain has a dilemma over at Countryside High School. He is currently ranked 3rd in his class. He's taking quite a few quality-point classes this semester, and so by all reasonable estimates, he should overtake the #1 ranking by Christmas.

So, what's so horrible about becoming valedictorian?

The speech he'd have to give.

I won't try to explain the situation much further; those of you who know Rain also are well familiar with his language limitations. Perhaps he can explain best in his own words:

"Aww, I sucks at speeching."

-------------

I bid you all goodnight, ladies and gentlemen.

Shh!

Don't tell anyone but, I don't have a copy of the Mu Alpha Theta application. I gave mine to Channing, but then I forgot to go get another one. This presents us with a choice then:

A) I can go get one tomorrow from Linder (without telling her why), then fill it out and forge some signatures, and turn it in tomorrow, or

B) Since Channing has "my" application technically, I've already told her that she gets to be Mu President for me.

Personally, plan B seems more ethical than A. Plan A involves a lot of deception, lying, sneaking, etc.

Sadly, Channing has refused this position.

Fortunately, I am an expert forger, lockpicker, safecracker, and card counter. There's probably a few other criminal skills I should brush up on. Another day perhaps.

We're So Not Addicted

Look. If there's anyone out there around the ages of 16 to 17, and who's interested in gambling, I'm here to tell you, you're a fucking idiot.

Yes, this means I'm a fucking idiot.

Friday afternoon, and I have the bright idea of having a poker game at my house. Six people total, and yes, even Bromar showed up (he was lost for at least half an hour, driving in circles on the CIRCULAR road around my house).

About 45 minutes in, after I had busted out, I suddenly had the bright idea of making it a rebuy tourney. Randy was pissed. But that's ok, because he's not a real person.

Amid jokes about Omar's undying love for a certain girl by the initials of R(achel) B(I can't spell her last name), and Randy's inability to speak either passable English or Spanish, we somehow found ourselves holding the short end of a stick that Randy was holding on to as the winner. No worries mate, we had a plan.

First, we played 6 way high-card, $1 and later $2 a hand. Joey managed to draw an Ace three separate times, but on the third time, after Max had flipped up another Ace (after he'd lost), both Randy and I looked down to find ourselves holding the last two Aces in the deck. Sadly, the three-way tiebreaker went to Randy. I did manage to win one high-card game, drawing out a K to beat a Q.

Having tired of playing high-card, we moved on to blackjack. $5 a hand seemed to become the norm, and Randy was probably up in the nieghborhood of $80 at his high (later after they left my house, Joey told me that Randy was at one point in debt for $40 when they played some more at Joey's house). I played a total of three blackjack hands, losing two for $10 each and winning one for $20.

Sadly, at one point, Randy and Joey began playing rock-paper-scissors for money, $1 a pop.

Joey wound up up $5 total.

The moral of the story is:

we are some fucking bad gamblers.

(15 minutes ago, Joey also told me that Randy thought he had lost the $50-dollar bill he had won gambling; later when Randy called Joey back, he told him he had found it...

in the toilet,

after having been urinated on by his younger brother.)

-------------

Yeah, we suck that much.

Tomorrow

He'd lost everything he had. He'd put all of it on the goddamned line, and he'd lost.

Was that the way it was supposed to happen? Was it meant to be this way? Was that asshole that runs things around this planet trying to teach him another fucking lesson?

Goddamnit, he'd done all he could. Goddamnit, even if he could have seen that fuckface's cards, he wouldn't have wanted anything to be different. Except for that goddamned queen on the goddamned river.

He didn't remember how he got out of there. Didn't remember the stunned looks around the table when the queen came up. Didn't remember any of the mumbled apologies and commiserations that they'd half-heartedly offered him.

All he remembered was the queen, smilingly like it'd been a fucking surprise party.

The one line from Rounders kept ringing in his head:

"It happens to everyone, from time to time, everyone goes bust. You'll be back in the game before you know it."

Fuck that. Fuck this game. Fuck all of it.

But Deck also knew he wasn't going to get a regular job any time soon.

He stumbled out into the predawn morning. The sky was the color of the red $500 chips they'd been using. A few stars lingered stubbornly in the sky, daring the sun to rise.

He felt sorry for them as he watched the sun climb lazily over the horizon.

-------------

Ugh, remind me to compile all this stuff soon. Poor Deck is so disjointed. He deserves a nice stable life.

I wish somebody would write me a nice stable life too.

Well, I haven't exactly been kind to him either. But I write what I know about, and bad beats... let's just say I know 'em pretty well by now. Besides, who the fuck wants a happy ending anyways?

Really, this post was just so I could come up for some fresh air, before I dive back into this little septic tank happily labeled "IB, Senior Year, 1st Semester."

Tired

Maybe Deck was right. Maybe if he could have asked God, He would have told him to do the same thing.

It didn't matter a damned bit though.

It'd taken him a long time to learn that particular lesson, but he finally had. Sometimes, being right just didn't matter.

Poker is probably the only game in existence where one player can do all the work, figure out all the angles, make all the right moves, trick his opponent into making a horrible decision, and still lose.

He'd been doing all the work for years now. He'd gradually moved up, from $0.05/$0.10 NL tables online, all the way to this, the $50/$100 NL game that went on in the basement of his regular cardroom 2 or 3 times a year.

He'd paid his fuckin' dues. He'd watched the donkeys river their miracle outs, and he'd taken it all without saying a fuckin' word. He just shook his head, and waited for the dealer to deal out the next hand.

And it had paid off. Little by little, his $1000 bankroll (borrowed from a friend whom he'd long since paid back) had grown. And when he finally heard about this game, the game, he didn't hesitate for an instant. He collected his little over $30,000, and he jumped in.

At first he'd been scared to death. Played a total of 3 hands in the first hour. Won the blinds once and folded on the flop the other two times.

He sat and he watched. He observed as the other players made their moves, seasoned veterans who didn't give this upstart a second glance. But he was watching them. And they introduced themselves to him slowly, through their actions and through their cards, if not through words. And so it was that after about two hours, he knew these guys as if he'd known them all his life. He discovered the shy, quiet one, the one who never had a lot of friends in high school, the one who was still a virgin. He found the loud, boorish guy, overaggressive and not afraid to show it, the one who had been picked on a lot when he was a kid and was now compensating for it at the table. It was crystal clear, to anyone who could observe the way he could.

So it was no surprise really when after about 12 hours, Deck looked down and found almost $70,000 in chips in front of him. And it wasn't much of a surprise either when he looked down to see two black Aces in the hole. It was about time, he figured.

"Make it $350," he pronounced.

Folded around to the button, who was what passed for the "table captain" here. He looked at his cards as slowly as if he was casually playing a nickel/dime home game. Deck stared unobtrusively at the empty green felt in the center of the table. Out of the corner of his eye, Deck caught the barest stirring of excitement. But the guy was as nonchalant as ever when he finally acted, after some choreographed meditation.

"Alright, I'll gamble wit ya'," he said as he splashed his chips into the pot.

Both blinds folded and the flop came down like an angel from heaven for Deck,

A-Q-3, the most beautiful rainbow Deck was sure he had ever seen.

He didn't let any hint of emotion leak through the iron mask of indifference on his face. He paused ambiguously, and decided to bet out into this $850 pot. The other guy wouldn't give up his Captain status without a fight.

"Bet a grand," he announced with an evenness that gave away as much indication of strength as it did of a bluff.

Captain didn't even blink. The raise was instantaneous.

"Pocket kings no good, I'll make it $5,000 more," he boasted with a grin.

Deck knew what he was trying to do. Captain had put him on a premium hand alright, but he didn't suspect pocket Aces. The guy was exuding more confidence by the minute, and he knew it. He wanted Deck to see it. What Deck had noticed about this guy was, he was good, and he knew he was good, but he just didn't think anyone else at the table was better than him. He knew there were some guys here that could make a good read, that could sniff out a bluff and reraise with the worst hand themselves. That's what he wanted Deck to pick up on. He wanted Deck to think that he was showing as much confidence as he could, because he was trying to run Deck over with nothing much himself.

So what would Deck do if he thought the Captain was muscling him out?

"Call," after several seconds from a pretense of deliberation.

Call, because it showed that he suspected something was up. That maybe this Captain was trying to run him over, but that he wasn't sure. Deck knew that's what the guy would think.

Turn was a useless 7, with four different suits on the board.

"Check," he said, while adding the slightest tinge of weakness to his voice by seemingly trying to accomplish the rarely successful strong-check.

"No free cards, it'll be 10 grand to see that river."

Damn, he was even cockier now, getting more carried away with himself.

Deck knew he had him. He couldn't read his cards, but his confidence was the type that was borne of having complete information. He knew more than the other guy, plain and simple.

He decided not to stall anymore, afraid to spoil the perfect act so far by dragging it out longer than it had to be. The hand Captain thought Deck had would most likely be A-K, he told himself. So if he felt like Captain was muscling him, he would raise, right here, right now.

"I'm all-in," he said, trying to mask his omnipotence by acting more confident than he should have been, as if the confidence itself could shield the A-K that the Captain thought Deck had.

And Captain counted his chips, and had Deck's last $51,650 covered by a grand. He called, not because he had thought through the hand and reached any sort of decision, but because the entire hand had played out exactly the way he had envisioned it.

Two plus two makes four, but just because you got four doesn't mean you added two plus two to get there.

The Captain flipped up two Queens as if they were a foregone conclusion.

As Deck turned over his cards, his gaze was squarely on the Captain's face. He would've laughed if he hadn't seen the same thing so many times before. There is no greater humiliation than having a hand play out exactly the way you wanted it, and then finding out you were so utterly wrong from the beginning. It's worse than any other feeling in the world, because the other guy did everything you wanted him to, but somehow you were still dead wrong. The Captain's face twisted, from what had been amusement and self-righteous smugness, to something unrecognizable. It was the face of a man who doesn't even know he's sick when they tell him he has a month to live.

Still one more card to come.

And wouldn't you know it?

The Queen of diamonds looked Deck square in the eye, and laughed.

Nothing Special

Good title... now I just need a story to go with it.

I'm thinking... kid in high school in middle of nowhere, valedictorian, wants to get the fuck out of there as quick as he can since he thinks it's nothing special, leaves his friends behind, goes to Harvard, finds out it's nothing special either, then regrets leaving his friends behind...

Throw in some alcohol, some poker games, a hooker or three, maybe a car accident, and bam!

Literary crap still.

::sigh::

Back to the goddamned drawing board.

Things You'll Find Out About Yourself while Filling Out an Application

"Name?"
(translation: what do you want on your death certificate, since you didn't have all that much say about your birth certificate?)

"Why did you consider volunteering here?"
(who exactly will be responsible for your death should you not work enough hours here?)

"Previous employment?"
(what do you know how to do?)

"Hobbies, interests, and skills? "
(what do you think you know how to do, and what would you like to pretend to do?)

"Have you ever been convicted of a felony?"
(if yes, then you're a menace to society; if no, then you suck and have pretty much never done anything cool in your life)

"Please provide two non-family references we may contact."
(who do we call to find out what you did to whose cat when you were how old?)

I think completing applications is one of the most introspective activities I ever undertake. I mean, here's a chance to finally figure out who you are, written on a sheet of paper. Stop pretending; now's your chance to make it official.

Maybe you'll find out how many awesome things you've done already. Or maybe you'll find out how useless your 17+ years on this green Earth have really been.

Enjoy!

Don't Panic

(Doug Adams will save my life yet...)

These days, life is filled with nothing but worrying and pancking. Deadlines missed, phone calls unreturned, conversations and relationships left hanging, and a million and seven other things to do that I will never get around to. I don't have spare time; I spend it worrying about what I should be doing.

Live each day afraid that you'll fuck up the next, and odds are you will. Such is the irony of our existence. Really that's probably the best available evidence that God exists; life would be too much of a goddamned coincidence to just all happen by accident. Nature can't have a sense of humor, but whoever is in charge of the show obviously does.

Live each day remembering what you forgot to do yesterday, and odds are, you'll never run out of things to remember. So far as us mortals are concerned, time flows linearly. Hence, the past is just like a handicapped parking spot: don't even think about it.

Learn what you can from what you have (or have not) done, and then let it settle into the muddy depths of your mind. There's no need to stir it up everyday. It serves no purpose, other than to muck up everything else until you can't see straight.

Prepare for the future, but don't stress about it. What will come, will come. It's like trying to predict what you're going to get dealt next hand; just play the cards you get, whatever they may be. You can't change them. All you can do is be ready, and know what to do with them.

Don't panic.

Don't look back.

Don't look too far ahead.

Make each moment mean something. Focus on what you can control. Fold your trash hands, watch your opponents, and stay sharp.

The cards will come, in time.

Keys to Success: (1) Redundancy

I downloaded Blogger for Word yesterday. It was one of those moments where you see something and you think, "gee, wouldn't that be nice to have?"

-------------

"Well I dunno Cody, would you really use it?"
"Well yeah Cody, I would. See, now I won't have to fire up the old Firefox browser everytime I want to blog."
"But Word is so ugly."
"Gee Cody, maybe you're right."
"No Cody, I think you're right."

-------------

Anyways, I convinced myself that this was something that I really absolutely must have. Just like my Google Desktop Search, my Gmail account, my Paradise Poker account, and maybe my Life in general. I fear boredom more than I fear Death. Which is why I have taken up the habit of doing everything more times than I should even have considered doing in the first place.

It's also a fun habit to have for conversations. Just ask the other person for confirmation of everything they just said to you, even if you heard it the first time. Redundancy. It will save a lot of marriages where the couple believes that they have nothing to talk about. Look:

-------------

"Hey Cody, what's up?"
"I'm sorry, what?"
"I said, 'what's up?' "
"Oh, uh, not much, how about you?"
"Same, same."
"Did you say it was the same for you?"
"Uhh, yeah, I did."
"Was that a yes?"
"Look, I'm gonna go... over there... now... to talk to... uhh... bye!"

-------------


That's right. Run.

Real World: Palm Harbor

Six IB students. One house. See what happens when we stop being polite, and start being real.

-------------

"Oh my God, have you looked at this Spanish homework yet?"
"No, why?"
"Well, it's... it's... disgusting."
"You want to talk about disgusting? There are actually blood stains in my HL Math book, from the kids who've committed suicide over it."
"You wuss, HL Spanish is definitely harder!"
"My ass!"
"What, you want a piece of this, bring it on!"
"What are you going to do, shove a burrito up my ass?"
"And what about you, are you just going to throw equations at me?"
"That's it bitch, I'm gonna beat your ass so hard, you'll wish you were a null set."

-------------

Lost and Found

A few days ago, our pet gopher tortoise Moz disappeared from the backyard of our residence in Oldsmar. Moz had been relaxing in the backyard, and had been left alone for about five minutes before it was noticed that she was no longer visible. A frantic search was mounted, with no immediate results. Several days earlier, she had been accidentally thrown out with the trash when no one noticed that she was occupying one of the boxes to be discarded. Perhaps she had decided to run away for good.

Or perhaps not.

She was discovered again this afternoon. You see, gopher tortoises are so-named for their burrowing habits, much like a gopher's. Well, she had taken up residence, in our backyard. A little mound of gray dirt stood adjacent to an entrance almost exactly in the shape of her profile. Apparently she's grown accustomed to this clime.

Welcome home, Moz.

(Note: All you folks with the "If you love something, let it go. If it comes back to you, its yours. If not, it never was."-thing, this just goes to show that, tortoises are people too.)

There is More to Life than Poker

"Did you know Cody, there's more to life than just poker?"
"Oh, and what makes you say that?"
"Are we going to argue this just for the heck of it?"
"Only if you're ready to get your ass kicked. Mentally speaking."
"Bring it on ya dirty chink."

......

"Far, far below the belt."
"Withdrawn."
"So let's do this, seriously. Name me an example."
"Meeting new people, getting out and seeing the world, making new friends, those are all big parts of life."
"They're also things I can do in a cardroom."
"You do this solely to kill me by annoying me."
"I'm not kidding. Spend 20 years in a cardroom, and you'll meet people from all over the world. You'll meet people from all walks of life. Amateurs, pros, donkeys, sharks, flounders, rocks, you'll see 'em all. Some of them you might like, some of them you might not. It's tough, but you can make a few friends if you're honest about it."
"I don't like it, but I might have to give you that one."

......

"You have anything else left?"
"Hmm, what about love?"
"I love aces in the hole."
"You know what I mean."
"Play this game long enough, you'll know what I mean too."
"It's just that though, poker is a game. You can't tell me the only thing you love in this world is a stupid card game."
"And what do you love? Your stupid pet dog? Your stupid car? Your stupid boyfriend? Your stupid career? Your stupid friends? Everything is stupid, if you want to call it that."
"So what are you saying, that life has no meaning and poker is as good as any other thing we might do?"
"No. Life will take on whatever meaning you want or need it to have. Poker is just one medium of expression, in that sense. It's one of those few opportunities for you to completely control the kind of person, the kind of player, that you are. Life is a million little things added together that you never take apart and change, but a poker player can change whatever it is that he needs to. Tighten up, loosen up, raise, fold, bluff, value bet, it's all up to you."
"And the cards?"
"The cards are just tools. What you do with them is up to you."
"Do you believe in luck, then?"
"Luck is a test. Good or bad, you have to test yourself each time you're given either one."

......

"I can't say that I agree with you Cody, but I can understand what you mean."
"Thanks."
"I'm glad you believe in me."
"Of course, Lady Luck."

The Value of not Looking Up

Just put your head down and trudge onward.

Looking up will often strain your overextended neck, hurt your squinting eyes, and tire your buzzing mind, if not worse. Often the too-long awaited dream ceases to be a dream, becoming only the ghost of one. One is haunted by the things that one sees, when one tries to look up and look too far.

The pots will come. You know they will. Put your game on autopilot. Don't get impatient. Don't get stupid. And it'll come. Sooner or later, it'll come. The one beautiful pot. K-K vs. A-K. Flop, A-9-K.

It'll happen.

"Rolled up aces over kings. Check-raising stupid tourists and taking huge pots off of them. Playing all-night high-limit Hold'em at the Taj, 'where the sand turns to gold.' Stacks and towers of checks I can't even see over."

You won't even have to try. When the time comes, it'll be just... perfect.

Until then, you just have to put in the hours. Just wait. Pay your dues. Do what they tell you you have to do. Somebody up there is keeping tabs. Trust me.

It is what it is

Worst Beats of the 2005 National Convention (all played at $.10/$.20 NL hold'em):

1) K-K vs. 8h-2h
I raise on the button with K-K, for $.50 more. Mike "Peaches" Ge calls from the BB, and everyone else folded. Flop is 8 high, with one heart. Check, I bet out, $1.50 (pot was $1.50 at that point). Call. Turn, 5 of hearts. Peaches bets $1.00, I raise, $3.50 more. Called, which was about 70% of his stack. Needless to say, the river was the ace of hearts.

2) A-A vs. 10-10
John "Chalky Queens" Bavlsik raised in early position, for $.50 more. Wake up with Aces in the cutoff, and reraise $2 more. Called, flop comes K-9-3. He bet, I call. Turn is, another 10. All-in, and I guess I could have laid it down.

3) combined, K-K vs. A-Q, twice against Peaches

My personal favorite: twice, everyone folds around to me in the small blind, and I fold as well, to A-A in the big blind (once Rain had it, once Peaches).

Oh yeah, we all got poker nicknames now.

I'm "Peanuts."

3999 is My Lucky Number

I don't think I need to say anything more about it.

(click to enlarge)

There are Those Blogs that are Meant to be Read...

... and there are those that are meant for nothing more than soul-searching and thought-jotting.

This falls into the latter.

As such, I shall no longer attempt to establish contact with the outside world.

:: cries of "nooo, don't leave us!" arise from the crowd of fans camping outside my blog ::

Oh, I guess I was dreaming again.

:: cricket ::

-------------

I'm almost down to the felt again. Every time I let myself get on a hot streak, I always find a way to lose it all away. I find a way to turn my own good luck into bad. I find a way to make donkey calls with hands like A-J-9 and a two-flush, finding a way to convince myself that I'm playing with guys who are so bad that I don't need good cards to crush the game. 3-betting with K-K-8, representing rolled-up 8's, when the other guy doesn't even know what the hell "rolled-up" means. And who's the bigger donkey, the guy who thinks the other will respect moves he's never even dreamed of, or the guy who just plays the only way he knows, and all your fancy moves be damned?

Persistence. When you don't have any money, that's the only thing you'll have left. How many hours I could have spent on so many more rewarding things. Finishing the EE, organizing Mu Alpha Theta under the gloriously efficient, opulently magnificent, brilliantly managed presidency of a slacker like me. A mental sigh, and life moves on.

These are not hours wasted, they are hours spent, hours invested. Wasting time is for the fool who knows not how little time he has left to waste. I know. Am I still a fool then? Perhaps. But the fool who knows that all around him are fools, is king among them.

Forget this game. Forget this part of my life that so far has done nothing for me but alienate and disappoint. It's not worth it. Goddamnit, I can wait till I'm 21 and unemployed. I've still got plenty of time to gamble the rest of my life away. Fuck this 0.04/0.08 crap. Fuck what I'm doing right now. Chasing the flush street after street, like some twisted detective story, only the hero never catches shit.

Why can't I just be happy? I know what I want. I know how to get it. I know how to play good poker. Damnit, why the fuck don't I play like I'm supposed to then?

Deep breath, says my brain.

Fuck you, says my ego.

But it's never been just about poker. No, although everything else is the same. Poker is about belief. Trying to manipulate other people's beliefs. Trying for yourself to believe the truth. The real truth. To see through the back of the cards and know. Just, know.

You never know though. Poker, and life, is about not knowing. It's about what you do with what you're dealt. What you do with what you know. What you try to learn. What you try to become. What you end up being. And what you think of yourself afterwards. Every good poker player will have that one morning when they wake up and cannot stand to look in the mirror. Disgusted by the way they blew through half (or more) of their bankroll the night before. To the sucker who they lost 3 hands in a row to. Tough (but not horrible) beats like K-J vs. Q-Q, 7-6 vs. A-K. But the one that sticks out most in their minds will always be the hand they went out on. The hand where they tried to force it. Tried to take charge of the game, take charge of that one moment, and make back the money they'd lost. Where they went for broke, and went broke. K-K in the BB, and grinning wolfishly inside as the fish on the button raises an exorbitant amount. Stupid ass, you comment to yourself. But outwardly, you're impassive. You stop, and ponder for as long as you deem appropriate. Reraise. Stall some more, as if you half-regretted it. All-in. Reluctantly, but not too reluctantly that it seems fake. Oh no, you're much too good to give something that stupid away. And quicker than lightning, the call comes. Even quicker, your vengeful glee turns to horror as the fish flips up two red aces, red as blood. But what's bleeding from you isn't blood though. It's pride. It's experience. It's the hours, days, months, years, you've poured into this game. The books you've read. The tips you've followed. The lessons you've given to show off. The tournaments you've won that now seem so inconsequential, so meaningless. You couldn't even beat this damn fool of a tourist, in a game at a level you've supposedly mastered. Goddamnit, people actually respected you.

Who's the bigger donkey?

I've come to that point in my life where I don't think I can look myself in the eye (in the mirror) anymore. I'm not the person I want to be. I'm not even close. And what's really frustrating, what really keeps me up at night sweating and uneasy, is that I know exactly what I'd want to be different about me. I know exactly what I could do. It's a cash game, there's no damned need to push all-in with the queens preflop. Call the donkey's raise, and fold it when he bets with a K on board. It's that simple. This isn't the goddamned WSOP. And you're not Phil-fucking-Ivey either. It's that simple. It really is.

And after all the whining and complaining is done, after all the overdramatic and hyperbolic is gone, I'm left with the simple fact that I have come to a defining moment in my life. There are two doors. Funny how the choice is always that simple.

Go big or go home.

Put up or shut up.

It's also not a coincidence that these schoolyard taunts ring so true now. Life has always been that simple. And all that acting, all that parading, all that bullshit you like to coat yourself in, it's not going to save you. It can't change a damned thing. You're either going to make it, or you're going to bite it.

You either got it or you don't.

I'd like to think I've still got it.

Everything New is Old Again

About the only new thing I can tell you that I've come to face as a senior so far is this: I got a keychain. It says Class of 2006. It came with the senior pictures.

And that's it. This year feels the same as any other year. And while I should get cracking on college apps, I haven't even gotten cracked (look, I'll do my best to change idioms to past tense) on my EE. Done a hell of a lot of reading. Found a lot of interesting subjects. Decided to go with my backup EE topic. Which it turns out, I don't know as much about as I thought I did.

Everything new that comes up falls right back into place in the old patterns. I am who I am, and that guy is a lazy son of a bitch (no offense mom), whom I'd like to give a piece of my mind someday.

Look kid, I'm gonna give you a valuable piece of advice.

Don't ever take any advice from anyone.

Silence

The obnoxious clatter of keys annoyed Deck Soben. He remembered glancing at his watch before the last time he had gone to the bathroom; it had been 2:37. He tried to check the system clock on his computer, but he could not make out the digits in the white, cloudy haze he saw at the bottom of his screen. Deck shut his eyes for a moment and tried to blink the fatigue from them.

"Damn digital clocks," he muttered into the silence. "Where's some damn hour and minute hands when you need them?"

The chatter of the keys under his fingers stopped abruptly, as he rubbed his eyes again. He turned off the monitor with a sloppy left hook from a half-formed fist, and maneuvered himself out of his chair. He stood up slowly, as if testing to see that his legs were still under him.

"Need a drink,” he said, louder than before. The sound of his voice interrupted the brooding silence, and he was glad for it.

He walked unsteadily to the kitchen, his feet shuffling across the carpeted floor. There was not even the sound of traffic outside his windows. Usually, he might hear the screech of tires and the abrupt purring of an engine which belonged to a car which belonged to a kid who wasn't really sure what the engine or the car were capable of. Tonight, there was nothing. Not even the whisper of a summer breeze.

The only light in his apartment had come from his computer screen, and he was walking now in complete darkness. But he found the refrigerator much like a blind man will find the toilet in his own house. As he opened the refrigerator door, the sharp, daring blast of white light erupted into the dark room, painting eerie shadows along his walls. The sudden light hurt his eyes, and Deck quickly closed the refrigerator after grabbing a familiar bottle. He hadn't taken the time to read the label, but he didn't need too either.

He made his way across the dark carpeted sea once again, his feet occasionally hitting small objects that remained hidden in darkness. He found his sofa without difficulty, and sat himself down easily. Deck took one long, measured sip. He placed the cold bottle upon the coffee table which he assumed still existed, despite the fact that he could discern no sign of it from his present surroundings. He sunk back heavily into his couch, and let the groan of old, timeworn springs fade away.

The old sofa supported him so perfectly that he suddenly felt nauseous, as a sensation of weightlessness settled over him. It had been another long night, and his mind and his senses could not bear them so well anymore.

He felt himself disappearing slowly into the blackness, melting away into nothingness. There was nothing to stop it, nothing solid that he could look upon or touch to reaffirm his own existence. There was nothing around him, nothing to anchor himself against, nothing but the unbearable burden of existence, his existence, which seemed to disrupt the perfect silence of the emptiness that surrounded him, and pressed in on him. His breathing was loud, too loud. The quiet whisper of his lungs became a resounding vibration. It reverberated through his body like the pounding of the surf against a child's sandcastle. And then slowly it faded away too. His breathing quieted, to a whisper, to a soft rustle, to the slightest disturbance of mere molecules in the air, until finally even the air was still. He felt his heart pounding, and it seemed odd to him that his heart was pounding so frantically when there was nothing there that needed it to pound. His body was no longer there. There was no one in the room anymore. And yet the sound of his beating heart continued to pound inside the room. Thump. Dum. Thump. Dum. Thump. Dum. It continued for what seemed like an eternity. Then even the regular beats tired of fighting the encroaching silence. His heart struggled no more, and the room was again as silent as death.

Why Would You Ever be Bored?

(I wasn't kidding about capitalization this time)

Ahh the 21st-century. Jet planes and computers and space shuttles and MTV. We live in the greatest age of human civilization ever encountered. There is more information freely available on the Internet to ANYONE than there ever was in the great ancient libraries of Alexandria, or any other library ever. Music, movies, books, and most any other form of human expression exist in abundance online, ready for download (a lot of it isn't even illegal to share). wikipedia.org is our generation's version of the Diderot's Encyclopédie, encompassing more information than any one human could ever possibly hope to know.

We have wiped out diseases that have killed millions in the past. We have taken the first tentative steps in exploring our Solar System. We have decoded our own genome. The average person lives a longer, healthier, and better life than that of any king or emperor of our past. While the task is certainly not complete, we can say that we have satisfied the basic needs of most human beings. Food, clothing, and shelter are no longer serious concerns for the average person. Tasks that used to occupy the majority of man's time, such as hunting animals, tending crops, building shelters, etc., are now left to a tiny minority, and much of it is done with the aid of machines.

So what does that leave us with now? Our brilliant technology and civilization which has conquered so much, what does that mean today for Joe Sixpack? It means he has a heck of a lot of spare time. Once our most basic necessities have been satisfied, what else is there for us to do? Collectively, the answer that our species has provided to that question is, nothing. To borrow from Fight Club, we are, "Goddamnit, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables, and slaves with white collars."

We are a generation that is endlessly and entirely bored with everything. Conversations consist of nothing but "Hey, what's up?", "Not much, you?", and "Same." Life is one inconsequential problem after another. We have spent our entire lives wondering whether this belt goes with those shoes, whether T-Mobile is better than Cingular, and whether we want to watch MTV or VH1. We have no purpose, and we don't even know if we want one.

One must assume that a species greater than our own, a race of beings who possess a stronger moral backbone and a deeper sense of duty, would have chosen to do things differently. Instead, we have built up a system solely for the purpose of feeding, clothing, and entertaining ourselves. The Matrix exists today, but it isn't a computer program. It doesn't need to be, to control us. It is merely the collected bullshit which we have chosen to build our lives upon and surround ourselves with. We are content to eat microwaved meals, wear mass-produced designer labels, and laugh ourselves silly in front of a device that, instead of being used to enlighten the masses, to improve their lives, to teach them something, spews forth mind-numbing images and white noise to keep our eyes occupied, fill our ears, and dull our minds.

You cannot help but get the feeling that somebody up there had given us a test, and we've failed it. We do not learn about our world, we do not try to improve it, we do not try to add to it, and we certainly to do not care about it.

"We are the byproducts of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty, these things don't concern me. What concerns me are celebrity magazines, television with 500 channels, some guys name on my underware, Rogain, Viagra, Olestra."

Forget about whatever it is that concerns you right now; it's a 99% percent certainty that in the big scheme of things, it isn't worth a damn. Instead, think about something you've seen on the news recently. No, you don't even have to go that far. Just stop for a moment, and think about a problem somebody else has. Anybody, anybody else that you know. Try to imagine what they're thinking about, what they're worrying about. Ask yourself, why? Why does that thing matter to them? Take some time. Then ask yourself the same question. Ask yourself if the stuff that you care about right at this instant in time, ask yourself if any of that really and truly matters to you.

If not, then I suggest you start looking for something that does. Because if you don't, one day you'll wake up and realize something. You will find that you have nowhere you need to be, nothing you need to do. And that is the most terrifying feeling in the world.

If the rest of the world doesn't mean anything to you, then you can't mean anything to the rest of the world either.

Headed in a New Direction

(... this time, with correct capitalization in the titles)

After thoroughly examining several philosophy blogs this morning, I've reached a very worrying and serious conclusion about this blog: mainly, that it has not fulfilled its moral obligation to the rest of the world.

The scientist who possesses in his mind a line of attack which could lead to a cure for cancer has a moral obligation to pursue that research, as long as no facts exist which could prove the research to be fruitless.

Similarly, the bored Chinese guy with a blog who could do the world a favor and enlighten it has a similar obligation to do so, until he either a) realizes that no one is listening, b) realizes that he has no right to tell other folks what to think, c) realizes that although b) might be true he can still present his arguments and leave them to the reader to adopt or refute, or d) has completely succeeded in his original task.

Since (a) would be difficult for this writer to notice, and (b) he would ignore, it seems there is no choice but to go on as valiantly as he can and aim for (d).

Now, off to prepare something juicy for consumption next post...

Kosher Or Not?

Let's go with... not kosher.

They Call You Lady Luck

Luck be a lady tonight
Luck be a lady tonight
Luck if you've ever been a lady to begin with
Luck be a lady tonight!

Poker is a chess game, but with luck involved. I could play Gary Kasparov a thousand times, and he'd beat me soundly each time. I could play Johnnie Chan a thousand times, and I'll bet you your house that I'd come out ahead more than fifty times. Hell, if we played hold'em, and he had me all-in with his A-A against my 7-2 offsuit each time, I'd still win 110 times out of a thousand. That's what keeps the suckers coming back isn't it? Ask a loser why he loses, and he won't know why. Ask a consistent winner why he can make a living off the game, and (if you can get him to divulge his secret) he can tell you what he'd do with aces in different positions, how he reads his opponents, how he decides how much to bet, how he knows when he should bet bottom pair and when he should fold top pair, and most importantly, that he's got a game plan. He knows what he's doing every time before he even sits down at a poker table. Just like the Boy Scouts'll tell you, always be prepared.

Ok, so now you're prepared for your Friday night poker game, but is that where it stops? If it's a good idea for a poker game, why not be prepared for that big Chem test next week? Why not be prepared for that next job interview? Or for that big first date with the girl you've been chasing for weeks? Why don't you just prepare yourself for everything the way you would for a poker game? One who does not understand the concept would tell you that it's impossible to prepare for everything, because you just don't know what might happen. That's true: you never know when your aces'll get cracked, or when you'll make your flush draw and when you won't. But that doesn't mean you can't be prepared for those situations. Preparing doesn't equate to knowing what will happen; it's rather the opposite. Being prepared means you can handle the worst but expect the best. You have to be able to deal with a bad grade on a test, but you expect a good one when you are adequately prepared. Being ready to have your aces cracked doesn't mean you expect it; it means you can deal with that blow and keep on playing.

Life is a poker game, but with something more important than money involved.

In Lieu Of Anything Exciting

I had planned to wait until I could come up with something exciting to write, but having realized that that may take a while, I caved. Hmm, now doesn't that seem reminiscent of a lot of modern marriages?

I spent most of today playing Winning Eleven 8, undisputedly the greatest soccer game ever made. The Master League is as addicting as... as poker, I guess. Ok, bad analogy. Actually, technically that wasn't an analogy. And now you have a small taste of what it's like inside my head. I make cracks about things, then make cracks about the flaws in the cracks I just made, then I make a final crack about how many cracks I'm making. Oh what a twisted web... etc, etc, etc.

Have you ever heard Daniel Negreanu talk about reading his opponents? Basically, depending on the level of his opponents, the process of reading becomes not only just "what does he have," but also "what does he think I have," "what does he think I think he has," "what does he think I think he thinks I have," and so on. I think I'm predisposed to that already; it's a game I play often with myself. Only it's, "what am I doing," "what do I think I'm doing," what do I think I think I'm doing," etc. Or the "what"-part is replaced by a "why."

Next week: a novel about an amateur detective who's read a few too many dectective novels.

*************

Don't Wait Up

(entry under construction)

(projected completion date: sometime in 2006)

Slow Deaths Are Always More Dramatic

Holy mackeral, 5 whole days without a single blog entry. Actually, "mackeral" is supposed to be spelled "mackerel." But I won't change it, because that would be cheating. I'm not kidding; I remember an incident from Chinese school several years ago. Yes, Chinese school. Where pathetic little children of immigrant families go to reinforce their shame of not knowing their mother language.

It was during a test. The teacher had walked over to my desk and was rountinely looking over my shoulder. I was diligently working my way through, not paying attention to her. She tapped me on the shoulder, and whispered in my ear, "I think that's a typo over there." Well it wasn't actually a typo, per se, but you know what I mean. Imagine writing the letters in the word "apple," except for no reason in the world, you crossed your p's. Yeah, it was like that.

So now I was faced with a moral dilemna. At least, I thought I was, but maybe you wouldn't have been. For you see, in my mind, the teacher had just given me illegal outside assistance. Imagine if during your AP test, your proctor came up to you and remarked to you that you had mispelled a word in your free-response packet (however unlikely that may be). Would it therefore, be ethically wrong to fix that? I certainly thought so, so I tried to ignore her. She was insistent however, and tried again. I shook my head "no" at her, but the message was lost. And in the end, I eneded up crying, shouting hysterically something to the effect of "Nooo, I won't do it, you can't make me, I'm a good boy!!!" etc.

And quietly inside, I cursed her whore of a mother and her tortoise of a father for creating this horrible monster of a teacher who was going to ruin my sweet, young, innocent life.

------

On a somewhat related note, the baby tortoise known as Moz is doing fine. His favorite food is bread, which I heartell is not supposed to be tortoise food, so now I put the little pellets of tortoise food that I bought from Petsmart into his bread. Also, it seems I should "water" him more often; I would just leave a lid-full of water in his box, but apparently, he doesn't like to drink on his own.

Correction, he's a she.

When We're Out Together Dancing Cheek To Cheek

There are several things I'd like to say that I've done by the end of my life. Some are stupid, some are personal, and some are downright cool, even by your standards.

In no particular order, they are:

• drag race professionally
• have sex in space
• rent out ad-space on condoms
• invent something that's invisible
• bungee-jump off of an airplane (laws of physics be damned)
• buy a country (something small, like Monaco)
  
• win an Oscar
• build myself a robotic woman, who responds only to commands ending in the word "bitch"
• publish a novel and find it in a bookstore
• buy an empty storefront, hang up a cardboard sign that says "Bookstore" and print off my book and put it on the only bookshelf in the place, and make myself feel like I've accomplished something
• have my name appear in the credits of a major motion picture, hopefully directed by/produced by/starring/or just significantly related to a high-school chum

Well ladies and gentlemen, that's all the time we have today.

Join us next week when we start watching Cody's mustache grow. Trust us, it'll be more interesting than just damn grass.

"You don't have a mustache."
"Well I shave every day anyways."
"Chinese people can't have facial hair."
"Oh yeah, who says?"
"The laws of nature."
"Pshht, screw that."
"You can't do it Cody, don't try."
"All I need is some Rogaine."
"For your face?"
"A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do."

Another Month Closer To My Own Death

It's June already, and I haven't even posted a new entry? Preposterous.

"Where's Cody Wang when you need him?"
"Oh he'll come if you need him."
"So?"
"So, apparently you don't need him."

Everything I Ever Really Needed To Know, I Learned From A Video Game

"Is that what you've been doing with yourself Cody?"
"Among other things, yes."
"So you've been playing video games instead of spending time with me, is that it?"
"Is there a way to answer that question that won't get me in trouble?"
"No."
"Yes."
"Huh?"
"I'm sorry, what?"
"What did you say yes to?"
"Yes, je veux coucher avec toi ce soir."
"Nice try, hot stuff."
"Can you blame me?"

Ok, so maybe I learned some stuff in kindergarten as well. Eminently useful stuff even, such as English. But everything else has been from video games. I'm not kidding either: there's a book out there that'll explain it all in terms you can understand, my IQ-challenged friends; it's called, Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter.

"Did you just call me stupid?"
"No Joey, I respect your intellect a great deal."
"Good, 'cuz I was gonna have to smack a bitch if you was making fun of me."
"Indeed."
"Booyakasha, my friend, booyakasha."

How to build a lightsaber? Knights of the Old Republic. How to morph into a dragon and bite the head off of an opponent? Mortal Kombat. How to drive? Crazy Taxi. How to roll around in a blue blur at supersonic speeds? Sonic the Hedgehog. How to stomp on annoying little frogs that can kill you if you touch them? Super Mario Brothers. Hell, I even learned how to pick up hookers... from Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. Well, maybe following hookers in a stolen car and honking at them repeatedly isn't exactly the way you're supposed to do it, but I think I've got the general idea.

Ok, so maybe some games are more intellectually-stimulating than others. Dead or Alive: Xtreme Beach Volleyball, for example, can be quite stimulating, just not for your intellect.

Transmission over.