The Passion of the Ann[ti]-Christ

In an attempt to brown-nose, rip-off, honor, whatever, one my favorite new sites, How to Write Screenplays. Badly., I decided to fire up MM Screenwriter and see if I could write the White Whale of conservatives, a movie that all the Hannity, Limbaugh, and Coulter fans could really get behind.

With that, I present "THE PASSION OF THE ANN[TI]-CHRIST":

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

           

   INT. LIBERTAS UNIVERSITY CLASSROOM -- EVENING

   LIBBY CLINTOON, president of the Lib-U Campus League of
   Unflinchingly Egalitarian Lesbians Evaluating Sorority
   Sisters (CLUELESS) is plotting with her gay counterpart,
   LIL' TEDDY KERRY, chairman of the Students United to Root-
   out Rightwing Evangelicals, Really (SURRENDER) to plot
   out their next nefarious, un-american plot.

   Libby holds up a small black box with a tiny dish antenna
   attached to the side.

             LIBBY CLINTOON
        Uncle Osama just sent me this.

             LIL' TEDDY KERRY
            (lisping)
        What does-phhth it do, boss-thphth?

             LIBBY CLINTOON
        It allows me to convert my deep, abiding
        hatred of the United States into energy
        that Uncle Osama uses to power his new
        satellite that Hollywood bought him to
        thwart the
            (shrilly)
        eeeeee-eeeeeee-eeeeee-eeeeee-vil President
        Bush and his Global War on Terror!

             LIL' TEDDY KERRY
        Lets-ssph see-pht it work, m-m-m-m-m
        ...master!

             LIBBY CLINTOON
            (looks askance at Teddy)
        You never stuttered before, Teddy.

             LIL' TEDDY KERRY
        I-i-i-i-i...it just started.

   Libby sets the device down on the taxpayer-funded desk.

             LIL' TEDDY KERRY (CONT'D)
        A-a-a-a-a-a-a-a...And I just wet my pants.

    Libby looks at Teddy with disgust.

             LIBBY CLINTOON
            (sneeringly)
        Your type are the reason I'm a lesbian.

   Libby takes the pink earbuds from Teddy's I-pod and puts
   them in her ears.  She plugs into the device.

             LIBBY CLINTOON (CONT'D)
        OK.  Join hands.

   She joins hands with Teddy, but recoils in horror.

             LIBBY CLINTOON (CONT'D)
        My God, not that there is one, your hands
        are clammy!

             LIL' TEDDY KERRY
        Pftht--S-s-s-s...Thorry, Boss.

   Libby takes his hands and composes herself.

             LIBBY CLINTOON
        OK.  OK.  Hmmmmmmmmmm.  OK.
            (shouting)
        Thousands of dead U.S. soldiers!  One
        trillion dollars spent!

   A blue glow envelopes the box.  Suddenly a beam shoots
   out of the top and through the ceiling!

   EXT. IRAQ BATTLEFIELD -- AT THE SAME TIME

   SGT. DICK TURGID, and PVT. SONNY AIMTRUE are pinned down
   on the flat roof of house made of mud.

   Dirty, filthy islamofascists holding babies up as shields
   are steadily advancing on their position.

   Occasionally, one them shouts propaganda at the heroic
   trio between rifle and rocket-propelled grenade volleys.

             DAMN DIRTY ISLAMOFASCIST #1
            (with a French accent while holding
            a gooing baby up in front of his
            filthy face)
        Give eeet up, spineless American buffoons!
        We read zee Mainstream Media in America
        and no one supports you!

   Sarge rears up and fires a brilliant shot from his M-4
   rifle that passes just under the baby's armpit, blowing
   the filthy islamofascist fascist's head off.

             SGT. DICK TURGID
        NEVER!

   Sonny picks off another with cool ease.  A 20-foot geyser
   of blood spews from whats left the islamofascist's head.

             PVT. SONNY AIMTRUE
        This is like shootin' fish in a barrel,
        Sarge.

             SGT. DICK TURGID
        Yes, it is son.  Just a few more and we
        can run along to chapel service.

             PVT. SONNY AIMTRUE
        Thank God.

             SGT. DICK TURGID
        Yes, thank God.

   Suddenly, the same glow that was around the box at Lib-U
   envelopes them.

             PVT. SONNY AIMTRUE
        I feel funny, Sarge.

             SGT. DICK TURGID
            (looks at him quizzically)
        Funny, or...
            (makes limp-wrist gesture with his
            hand)
        funny, funny.

             PVT. SONNY AIMTRUE
            (disgustedly)
        C'mon Sarge!  Just funny.

             SGT. DICK TURGID
        No matter!  Keep firing, soldier!

   They both return to shooting at the islamofascists who
   are now advancing on them humming the "Space Invaders"
   video game theme.

   Except now, EVERY TIME they pull their triggers their
   rifles flinch off to one side or the other.  Dirt sprays
   up around the islamofascists.

             PVT. SONNY AIMTRUE
        Wha-wha-what's happening Sarge!

             SGT. DICK TURGID
        I don't know son!  KEEP FIRING!

   They both fire wildly until their rifles are empty.

   The islamofascists look around surprisedly at each other,
   smile, and throw their babies down.

   They start walking towards our heroes.

             PVT. SONNY AIMTRUE
        Oh no, Sarge!  Here they come!

             SGT. DICK TURGID
        Your grenades, Private!  Throw them!

   They both claw at their grenades.

   Suddenly, the green glow encircles the rings on Sonny's
   grenades and they all pop out at once like in that X-Man
   movie.

   Sarge dives for cover.

             PVT. SONNY AIMTRUE
        AAAEEEEEIIIIII!
            (HUGE EXPLOSION)
        GOD BLESS AMERICA!

   Sarge looks over the tattered remains of Sonny.

             SGT. DICK TURGID
        HE ONLY HAD ONE MORE TOUR!  NOOOOOOOO!

   A filthy islamofascist walks up to Sarge, cocking an AK-
   47.

   A shot rings out. 

I'm Ready for My Ass-kicking Mr. DeMille...

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker!

This Online Poker Tournament is a No Limit Texas Holdem event exclusive to Bloggers.

Registration code: 1211735

Lucky Bastard.

We've all thought it, muttered it, shouted it, at a poker table. "Lucky Bastard" or much, much, much, worse. "You stupid called-away-2000-with-pocket-sixes-until-you-hit-the-set-on-the-river motherfucker" worse.

Much better and smarter players than me, such as CJ, Jordan, and Byron at Biggestron have weighed in on the subject of luck at the felt, and everyone makes really good points, but Byron really knocks it out of the park with this (read the whole thing):

Personally, I hate playing against bad players, unless I have a very, very good feel for their betting (or more often ‘calling’) patterns. When you can’t get them to fold, that 5-10% edge becomes apparent, and variance begins to make you sick with its roller coaster ways.

So what if you wait to have a tier one hand - when it gets cracked in a big pot, or only earns you a tiny pot to a bunch of folds, your time and money have been wasted. You *have* to get in there and gamble it up to make money at this game.

People think dominating hands (say the tier one AK vs the supposedly unplayable A7) are huge, but they are not that much of an edge. Winning with dominated hands is as common as rolling either a six or an eight with a pair of dice. Have you ever rolled a six or an eight?

Yeah, me too, plenty of times.

This the conundrum of serious low-limit players. Crap hands = craps.

The netdonkey will play anything, will bluff with anything, and will showdown anything. That is going to shave the advantage of skill down to nearly nothing in the short term.

Looks like Antigua has our back...

Whoops! looks like Antigua has already filed with the WTO against our meddling net-nannies.

3 Days Too Late...

That's not quite as weird as this hand:

WTO No-no...

The Democrats who run Washington state decided recently to lump online poker players in with pedophiles and meth dealers. On June 7th, online poker will be officially, specifically, outlawed in The State That Microsoft Built. It makes me ashamed of my party. Why the fuck can't we be for freedom across the board and let people make their own choices? Idiots. All bullshit like this does is strengthen the image of Democrats as meddling nannies and cost us the votes of small-l libertarians who should be our allies in this time of illegal wiretaps and surveillance cameras everywhere.

Setting aside the serious question of how these geniuses plan on enforcing the ban (I'm suuuure the sites will hand over lists of WA players.), what if this takes off nationally?

Any lawyers reading this? My question is--since all the card rooms are based in foreign countries, could WA be violating the "level playing field" provisions of the WTO? After all, live poker is legal all over the country, but our governmental morons outlaw the version that is only foreign-based.

Anybody?

Guess it's time to get off my butt...

I've resisted posting for a long time because of a deep concern for the health of anyone who might be brought here due to random Google searches for "Britney-fucking-doggie-style-on-a-bearskin-rug":



(So? I didn't tell you that Britney is fucking having a baby doggie-style on a bearskin rug? By the way, has anyone seen a rear view photo of this statue? The rear view with K-Fed Jr's noggin crowning? Not that I'd like to take advantage of pervs out searching for "BritneyFucking HavingaBaby Doggie-Style OnaBearskinRug RearView WithHeadCrowning.jpg" for page view #s that will push me to early retirement flush with hundreds of hundreds of dollars.)

My concern for reader health is due to the unintended physical effects of reading my harrowing tales of life in the ass-end of poker, low-limit. I believe that some of my tales are so compelling and riveting that the involuntary tightening in the dear reader's rear end will actually lead to debilitating sphincter-sprain.

Perhaps I am a little over-focused on the 'nether regions this morning. My ass is raw, ass my lasst FPP-tourney session left my top 2-pairs beat 3 times in a row by rivered straights. I only slowplayed 1 of them, the others were backed into by luckboxes overplaying pairs. Such is life.

No, I'll tell a 2 half-truths for why I fell off the face of the earth blog-wise. First, my greatest natural talent is laziness.

Second, some of the poker bloggers I follow like a starry-eyed schoolgirl have been going through wrenching life...err "changes" of the good, old-fashioned, toe-curling variety for the last six months. Mayhem wreaked by leaky colons or bad-poetry spouting douchebags, even the heartbreak of working in Hollywood.

Shouting into the void about .50/1 NL beats seemed a little unseemly. I read and kept my mouth shut. I didn't even comment, as years of verbal warfare with rightwing idiots have blunted my enthusiasm for comment threads. I even got too busy for the WWdN game a few times, and slowly forgot to even play in that. I dropped off the scene, having hardly been on the fucker in the first place.

What could bring me back here to address the legions of web-search site spiders that are my only fraudience?


This will do it.

Might as well take a shot, although I know that my chips will be safely inside some professional luckbox's chip stack within minutes.

A jealous prediction...

We were minding our own business, sipping SoCos in the hooker bar, when "Wham!", the giant dancing liquor bottles appeared!

The rest of the night was a blur...

Fuck you Q...

No, not that Q...

The Bitch-Goddess Variance has finally decided to take some pity on my chapped, bruised junk and give me some of that "just a little better than the other poor sap" sugah. Final tables in just about every SNG. Backdoor straights against idiots playing weak suited ace-pairs.

In almost all the SNGs where I've gone deep, winning or seconding (after this month, I'll take it) I've found myself short-stacked 6-handed. Only 5 pay. My M, around .0000258. My Q, "Surrender Dorothy!"

I get KTo on the button. I'll feel the brush of a phantom ugly-ass Red Sox ball cap brim on the side of my head. "You gotta go," The Ghost of WSOPs Past whispers in my ear.

"Fuck you Dan," I say, folding. The big-stack SB pushes more than my stack anyway and the BB calls all-in. SB has TT, BB has KK. SB catches the case T, BB goes home, I make the money for what seems like the first time.

Yadda yadda, push, push, my aces over kings beats kings over aces for the win.

WSOP Fingerlings

Once again, the fertile rivers of online poker are teeming with untold thousands of poker fingerlings. Poker fingerlings hatched from the coupling of ESPN's WSOP Main Event coverage and each novice's fevered belief that they too have what it takes to swim back to the loftiest headwaters in next year's Main Event.

I, like many, started that way. Inspired by Luckymaker(*)...err Moneymaker's triumph in '04, I jumped into the churning, whirlpool-infested Class V rapids of Paradise Poker.

Long story short, my meager bankroll proved to be nutritious fodder for the more bigger, more adept fish. Reading through the hand histories now, I should have been sued for malpractice. No ace weak enough, no king naked enough, I was spewing chips like a diarrhetic horse.

However, there are spots in the histories where I'm the one laying the hurt on. For instance, I get pocket aces, and get all my money in performing an all-in reraise of a large bet on the turn after a three-diamond flop. After the three-minute Paradise pause, I see the error of my ways when he flips over the king-high flush.

I catch runner-runner aces for quads, the definition of a perfect catch.

I donk away the chips in minutes.

That brings me back to what is happening on PokerStars. Right now, there are 65,000+ players playing on 'Stars. In the months before the WSOP Final Table coverage, there were around 48K players logged on at any one time. (my very unscientific eyeballing of the situation)

What does that mean? For those of you playing higher limits, nothing. For those who play low limits like me it means learning to deal with complete idiots at the table.

"No big deal," you're saying now, "I deal with table idiots all the time." No, I'm talking about idiots, plural. For instance, you hold AKs on the button pre-flop. Three limpers and you raise 5BB. All three limpers call. The flop comes A-5-9 rainbow. The three limpers check to you, you value-bet the pot, only one of the limpers calls.

You are beat. The weak-ace playing donkey has drawn 2 pair. Miseducated due to TV poker, TV donkeys don't have a clue about the difference between short-handed final table play and playing against a few players still in a full table. I've never seen more second pairs played all-in as the last couple of weeks.

How to play? Sadly, there's not much you can do against a table of idiots other than play tight, then get lucky when the garbage hands inevitably come through. In the long run, you will find nourishment in the WSOP fingerling's bankrolls, just beware drowning under their onslaught.

(*) Not that I'm saying that Moneymaker is a bad player. He could obviously kick my ass with ease at the poker table. Wasting time obsessing about poker however, he would be toast against me.