One of my favorite political writers is Matt Taibbi, columnist at Rolling Stone magazine, who also penned a few books such as The Great Derangement, which included an astute observation about politics and Big Business...
"You don't elect politicians to commit crimes; you elect politicians to make your crimes legal." - Matt Taibbi
Black Friday more than put a wrinkle into the lives of American poker players, it decimated the entire online poker landscape. On April 15th, we all discovered that we could no longer play on our favorite online poker sites. Just the day before on April 14th, Americans went about their lives with the ease and comfort knowing their bankrolls were safe in a virtual bank somewhere overseas. We were under the impression that we could exercise our right to gamble... or choose not to gamble... because after all, we're adults protected under the Constitution of the United States. We have the unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Online poker could be one of those, or it could be all three. I know I spent too many hours logged onto a different online poker site bogged down in the pursuit of happiness, only to get sucked out by a one-outer, which sent me on mega-LAGtard-Scandi-tilt.
Online poker was a short-term escape from the harsh reality that we live in corporatocracy. Our nefarious politicians are pwned by oligarchs and plutocrats, all of whom don't give a rat's ass about your personal liberty to engage in any sort of activity (gambling or otherwise) on the internet. If you haven't been paying attention to SOPA or the NDAA, then you should get off your ass and do some research. Uncle Sam and Big Brother are now one in the same while a shadowy cabal of international banksters are pulling the strings.
Remember that scene from The Godfather, after the ailing Don handed over the reigns of the Family to his son, Michael Corleone?
"You are like me," mumbled Don Corleone. "We refuse to be fools, to be puppets dancing on a string pulled by other men."
I'm still trying to figure out why some activities in America are considered a crime and why other things are permitted, but then again most laws these days defy all logic. We're living in a rigged political system that is rotten to the core. Corruption is the grease that keeps the wheels of Big Business churning. Corruption is what re-balances the manipulated scales of justice.
Who were the real culprits behind online poker prohibition in America? After doing some research and "following the money" trail, I pointed fingers in a post titled Black Friday, Vampire Squids, and 1,000 Masturbating Monkeys. Almost eight months later, I continue to search for more concise answers. Sure, we have the names of the unscrupulous politicians leading the witch hunt, but like Don Corleone explained, someone else is tugging at those puppet strings.
Who are the puppeteers?
Why did they cock block us?
What is so terrifying about online poker?
What kind of crimes against humanity did we commit by sitting around in our underwear and playing cards?
How did the simple act of playing online poker become threatening to the Establishment?
I guess the answer to my last question is this: poker players are rebellious in nature and free thinkers. Many of us would not have taken the courageous leap into the virtual waters at online poker sites unless we were strong-willed, determined, and seeking an alternative way to live our lives. Online poker provided income, happiness, purpose and validation instead of following the herd and the Master Plan (college > job > marriage > mortgage > kids > college fund > retirement) that had been beaten into our heads since birth. We were conditioned to conform from the moment we popped out of our mother's womb. We've been corralled into institutions like cattle, stripped of any semblance of individuality, brainwashed into living a life that we think is what we're supposed to do -- obey, consume, reproduce -- all of this without questioning authority and expressing an independent thought. The moment any of us stray from the path, we're ostracized and marginalized, and if that doesn't deter us, then agents of the state (paid by our tax dollars) will beat the shit out of us until we get back in line. And those whom stay on the path and do not upset the herd are thrust into a fabricated world in which the entire point of existence is to...
1. Become obedient cubicle slaves exploited by corporate overlords.
2. Generate tax income for the bloated state.
3. Create profits for the banking cartel in form of debt creation -- credit cards, car loans, school loans, small business loans, mortgages and second mortgages.
4. Buy cheap stuff (Made in China) that we don't need, which proliferates ginormous profits for Big Business.
5. Breed children so a new generation of consumers and debt slaves will continue this maddening cycle.
I was drawn to poker because of its anarchist nature, but since then it's been bastardized both economically and politically. Do you want me to scare the shit out of you? Many pundits vehemently against online poker are convinced online poker sites (and other online gambling sites) launder money for terrorist networks. The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) was passed the other day, which gives the military the green light to scoop up American citizens and detain us indefinitely as an enemy of the state if we're suspected of having ties to al-Qaeda or any other terrorist groups and anti-American organizations. Say goodbye to "innocent until proven guilty."
"Theory of Poker" translated into Farsi
Under the NDAA, our totalitarian government can demonize anyone, including online poker players, by simply labeling them enemy combatants. Many of you thought not being able to play in the Sunday Million sucked, just wait until the military shows up at your front door, bags a black hood over your head, then whisks you away to Gitmo or some other secret prison, where you're forced to do the naked pyramid with other freshly-detained Jihadists.
What the hell has this country come to? It's poker, for fuck's sake! It's just a card game. A game. An all-American game. Texas Hold'em. The Cadillac of Poker. "It takes seconds to learn and a lifetime to master," according to Mike Sexton, the ubiquitous ambassador to poker, whose name will now pop up on the FBI's Watch List in between Ramadan Abdullah Mohammad Shallah and Husayn Muhammad al-Umari.
Any way you look at it, unsuspecting Americans were squeezed by the government and we all got caught up in this shakedown when the UIGEA passed in 2006. Our last hope is to sway politicians to alter the laws, just like Matt Taibbi said in his famous quote... "You don't elect politicians to commit crimes; you elect politicians to make your crimes legal."
The sobering reality is that all the letters and emails in the world won't change the mind of our licentious elected officials. The poker industry dusted off hundreds of millions in a concentrated effort to lobby Congress, yet those we trusted to get the job done dropped the ball time and time again. We must think outside the box to solve the problem, and resort to drastic measures in order to re-install the freedom to fire up online poker sites once again. It will take a shitload of cash and gold to persuade the immoral muppets in DC to end online poker prohibition. If bribes don't work, then we'll have to call in a favor with the wiseguys. Because all it takes is just one severed, bloody horse's head in the right politician's bed to shape policy in our favor. Then, and only then, will we be able to play online poker again.
While we wait for the proverbial horse's head, the time has come to say farewell to a couple of dear friends. RIP online poker. RIP America.
I'm always afraid to write about baseball because I don't want to be a jinx. No one wants to be a jinx and become a social outcast and pariah, like the weird kid in grammar school who everyone avoided at lunch time because he smelled like cat piss.
Baseball is a game wrapped in superstitions, jinxes, rituals. Babe Ruth was an unlanced boil on the collective arses of New Englanders for almost a century. Even Red Sox third baseman Wade Boggs ate fried chicken before every game and if he didn't he was doomed to go 0-5 at the plate, so he made sure he ate fried chicken -- no matter what. During winning streaks, players won't wash their uniforms or socks. Players won't step on the foul lines when running off the field. And everyone in the dugout doesn't even talk about or recognize a no-hitter when it's happening.
Superstitions are utterly stupid, because once you give in to a superstition, your life becomes ruined because you become enslaved by your biggest fears of breaking whatever ritual you created to make yourself feel less anxious. Yet, I only adhere to one -- I never carry around $50 bills. Grubby told me about it in 2004 when I first got into playing poker in casinos. Since then I refuse to touch $50s and if one crosses my path, I get rid of it as soon as possible.
I used to have another ritual which occurred whenever I traveled. A quick back story -- I have a recurring nightmare that I die in a plane crash -- so, to assuage my fears, I rap my closed right hand on the outside of the plane just above the doorway before I enter and I'm greeted by the flight attendants. I dunno when that ritual started, but I stopped doing it a couple of years ago. So if/when I die in a plane crash, I don't want that added extra pressure following me into the afterlife because I didn't quell any superstitions before I stepped onto the plane.
I'm supposed to smart enough to know that whatever I do will alter the future, as much as I'd like to think I can affect the outcome of a game or prevent a plane crash. Even though I know my actions, like writing about the Yankees on my blog, won't affect the game, I have been silent for a few weeks because I don't want to be bogged down with guilt that I jinxed the Yanks. No one wants to be a jinx.
As my buddy Joe Speaker proclaimed, "Jinxes are true. You and I and the American People know it's not true, but it really is."
Yeah, I don't want the jinx label, but I also won't adhere to any sports-related superstitions, which is why I still wear my Yankees visor backwards when they're in desperate need of a hit. Some cautious habits never die, even if it's a silly superstition. You know, hokey religions with light sabres and shit. Then again rally hats are waaaaaaay more inventive than that fucking insane cracked-up Rally Monkey that the L.A. Angels of Anaheim uses to fire up the crowd.
I hate to be known as a jinx among my sporting peers, because some of the most random people are slaves to superstitions, especially die-hard sports fans. Oh, and how can I forget about hard-core superstitious annoying-as-shit sports bettors?
I know, because I'm one who grows more and more superstitious and intense whenever there's sums of money on the line. Take this summer for example -- I was covering the WSOP in Las Vegas during the NBA playoffs leading up to the Finals against Miami. I had bet big on the Dallas Mavericks to win the entire Championship along with individual bets on each game they played en route to the title. I watched one game with AlCantHang at McFadden's Pub (formerly the Tilted Kilt) inside the Rio Casino. I never go to that joint anymore after the Tilted Kilt left, yet we had to watch the game there due to lack of space in the sportsbook and adjoining bar, which were packed with fans and bettors. Alas, I went to the pub with Al because we had no other alternative... yadda, yadda, yadda.... the Dallas Mavs came from behind wins (and covering the spread) in one of the most exhilarating games I had sweated in a very long time.
I made some good coin that day and thus, a new superstition was born. For the rest of the series, I wanted to watch every game with Al at McFadden's.
Sweating the NBA playoffs at McFadden's with AlCantHang and Michele the Cougar
The one time we broke the streak and skipped McFadden's, the Mavs didn't cover (incidentally, when I watched Game 7 of the NHL playoffs with my colleague Lance, my bet on Vancouver shit the bed because Al wasn't with me!). As much as I know that neither myself, Al, or McFadden's will affect how many three pointers Dirk Nowitzki will drill or how many fouls the refs will call -- I still wanted to cover my ass and placate any potentially superstitions that induce a spike in sport betting anxiety. That means sometimes giving in to superstitions -- whether it's wearing a "rally cap" or watching a game in the same place with the same people.
I guess that's why I saved any baseball commentary for the infamous "NYC sports thread" -- an email thread with a small group of NYC sports fans that includes my brother, college buddy Jerry, and da Rooster, that has been running for few years now specializing in topics on all things sports in New York City -- lots of Yankees, Knicks and Jets chatter with a smattering of Miami Hurricanes football, hockey, boxing, trying to pick up Latina women on the subway, UFC, and English soccer.
Yesterday, if you polled the universe, I don't think not too many people had an inkling of faith in AJ Burnett. The locker room prankster is beloved among his teammates, but he's struggled down the stretch. AJ was scheduled to take the mound in Game 4 against the Detroit Tigers with the Yankees down 2-1 in a five-game series , and on the verge of being eliminated from the playoffs. All hopes rested upon the shoulders (more so the right arm of their weakest link in the chain) of AJ, who once achieved perfection ten years ago when he tossed a no-hitter, but his best days were way behind him. As a degen gambler, I frequently bet the OVER (combined run totals) in AJ's games and never dared betting on the Yanks whenever it was his turn in the rotation. I had no faith in him during the season and had even less confidence in the playoffs.
Even my mother, who is nothing close to being a religious person, knew the writing was on the wall with AJ on the slate to pitch. She all but declared the Yankees dead on arrival at the start of Game 4 and sent me a text message stating the only hope the Yanks had was to "pray for them."
Wow. When a native of the Bronx is looking for spiritual help, you know it's a bleak.
That text stunned me. My mother had not-so-secret disdain for AJ Burnett. I'd estimate that 75% of the text messages she sent me over the last two years occurred on days when AJ pitched and usually resembled something like... "AJ sucks."
No one had confidence in AJ. The bookies in Vegas set the line with Yankees as the dog. Yanks fans, even the most diehards, had little to no faith in AJ. We all prepared for the worst,. The bookies. My mother. Everyone calling into the Mike and the Mad Dog radio show. The guys in my email thread. Even me.
The wiseguys in Vegas bet the Yankees, because they love betting dogs in the playoffs, especially on a veteran team that was on the brink of elimination. Even with AJ on the mound, they bet the Yankees anyway. That takes huge balls from my perspective as a fan -- but they viewed the situation differently -- AJ would be on a short leash and Girardi would yank him before the game got really ugly, and at some point it would come down to the Tigers bullpen holding off an offensive surge from the Yanks in the late innings. I had a similar outlook, which I told my brother yesterday morning, that I had a feeling that AJ would get rocked early on and eventually get yanked in the second inning after giving up two runs, before Phil Hughes put out the fire and pitched five solid innings in relief as Yanks rallied and came from behind to win 7-4.
Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good.
Curtis Granderson bailed out AJ Burnett big time with the bases loaded. If Granderson doesn't catch up and chase it down that fly ball for the crucial third out to thwart a Tigers rally in the first inning, then the Yanks are looking at a deficit of 2-0 or potentially 3-0. At that point, the lynch mob would start chanting AJ's name and he'd be dead by the seventh inning stretch.
Right place, right time. Or as Yogi Berra succinctly stated -- "Hit 'em where they ain't."
But the ain't in that instance was Granderson on his horse making the the first of two sensational catches during his defensive patrol of centerfield (his second catch fro the 6th inning is pictured above). Granderson's outstanding catches symbolized the Yankees season, because he bailed them out in more ways than they'll ever know. Even if the Yanks lose game 5, Granderson put them in a position to advance to the next round.
After Granderson's first inning heroics, AJ Burnett should name his next kid after Granderson, or buy him a Lexus for Christmas, or pick up the tab to steak dinners every time they're on the road, because if Grandy doesn't make that catch in the first inning, then AJ Burnett gets whacked. He'd go missing for a few weeks, before his corpse was found floating in the East River, with chunks of his bloated face eaten up by river rats.
That didn't come out right. I should say that... I once became chummy with a call girl.
OK, now I'm really starting to dig myself a hole and my girlfriend is ready to grill me with a thousand and one different questions. Let me clarify even more... I had become acquainted with a high end call girl from New York City. We never actually met officially. Just lots of emails back and forth. She was an avid reader of my personal blog, Tao of Pauly, and a sometime commenter on Coventry Music. She seemed rather ordinary with one exception... she had sex with men for money. She did make any excuses about it. She enjoyed sex and had no problems selling herself. And her cookies weren't cheap.
Her philosophy was simple. Society was hypocritical and pointing fingers at prostitutes when they were all prostitutes themselves.
Look, we're all whores at some time in life. Some of us less, others are more. Sure we might not be taking it in the ass in the literal sense, but who among us hasn't been royally fucked over?
If you ain't a pimp, then you're a whore.
I didn't say that. Neither did Shakespeare or Bob Dylan. It might have been Ice-T or Ice Cube, Pete Nice from 3rd Bass, or one of the crew from Wu Tang? I forget exactly who, but the source of the quote doesn't matter as much of the simplicity of the underlying fact of the statement. It actually goes back to something I have written many times before... we live in a use and abuse society. If you ain't using someone, then you're getting abused by someone.
Pimps and hos. Royalty and peasants. The haves versus the have nots.
No matter what city I lived in, or what industry I worked in, I've always come across a section of people who will do nothing short of trying to exploit you. It's the nature of the game of life. Politicians do it all the time -- they use us to get into office and once that happens they will keep using us to stay in office. They're not really looking out for our interests, rather, they're concerned with their careers, their legacies, and paying back the juntas and companies who funded their campaigns to begin with. To the puppets in DC, we're that cute piece of ass that they want to nail... and will do anything possible to get us in the sack. Once the deed is done... that's it. They are going to fucking sleep. The worst thing is that they didn't even pay you. You did it for free.
Big Business entities are the most ruthless pimps on the planet. Come on, you don't actually think they care about your well being and compensating you for what you're really worth? To them you're just a number. If they could outsource your job or hire an illegal Mexican... they would. That's why it's important that you're are the ideal employee in their eyes -- to be blunt -- a fuckin' sheep. Otherwise, you have to be truly talented and indispensable. That's the only way they will put up with your bullshit and demand for higher wages.
A couple of years before the drugs war exploded in towns along the US/Mexico border, I first heard about the feminicidios... horror stories about scores of missing young women who were later found raped, murdered, and missing body parts. During my first visit to Juarez, Mexico I noticed pink crosses at the side of the road. I asked my friend from El Paso about the origins of the pink crosses and she clued me in on the feminicidios. The crosses were memorials constructed at the sites where dismembered bodies were discovered.
The feminicidios began in the mid-90s and escalated through the millennium. Some religious feared that the missing women were part of ritual killings during fin de siecle. A few journalists were had a theory the murders were the evil doings of the worst serial killer of all time. Law enforcement types suggested the murders were a precursor to the drug wars. The exact number of feminicidios varied from 500 to 5,000. Who knows for sure how many women died?
Many of those murdered young women shared something in common -- they worked at maquiladoras -- or massive sweat shops and factories for international corporations seeking dirt cheap labor. I read one theory that bus drivers were the ones doing the killings. Most of these workers had to be bussed from Juarez city center to the factories. When the girls refused the sexual advances of the bus drivers, they were raped, killed, and tossed out like a piece of trash.
However, the most compelling theory is the most haunting. One journalist suggested that the young women were killed because they were getting out of line at the work place by demanding higher wages and better working conditions. When they attempted to unionize or stand up to their bosses, they were quickly "removed" from the factory and never seen again.
What really happened in Juarez in the 1990s and early 2000s? No one knows for sure. My grand hypothesis is that combination of all of the above, but specifically the theory about the factories killing off workers who showed any dissent. After all, when was the last time the mutilated corpse of a "Yes Man" was found on the side of the road?
Ruthless suits don't resort to those gruesome tactics in the American workplace... yet. But more and more we're learning every day what happens to good citizens who are fed up with the system, unplugging themselves from the Matrix, and demanding their true rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Unfortunately,it's easy to upset the herd when you roam the other way. Anyone outside of the box who decides to march to the beat of a different drummer is an instant target for ridicule. Our fear mongering society is quick to point the dissenters out to authorities. Once the federales get involved, who knows what happens next.
Yes, we're mostly a world of whores. Some of us grow up to be pimps, which is sort of like the lesser of two evils. Sadly, that's the supreme goal in life... to be the one exploiting a stable of prostitutes... instead of being the whore, turning tricks for peanuts.
In the end getting paid is still better than doing it for free. Sure, I write plenty of stuff for free on my blogs -- probably close to one million words -- but that's all part of a greater master scheme to get you to buy my books.
So kids, just remember that only sluts do it for free. Pro whores do it for the paycheck.
Please leave your cash on the dresser before you go.
* * *
Buddha preaches tolerance, compassion, and forgiveness. But the Big Bald B never had to deal with the infantile jerkoffs I've encountered in poker that tainted the WSOP.
I have a simple rule when I'm working -- if I can hear you over the background music that is played at a reasonable volume, then you're loud are therefore annoying me and eligible for an asshole fine.
God knows, well Buddha knows too, that when I start compiling lists of people I want to handout asshole fines to -- then I've lost all grip on Buddhism, which in essence is losing all faith in humanity. I can only deal with people depending on my philosophical leanings of that day. When I'm an existentialist or nihilist, then I either don't believe in or don't care about humankind. Right now, I'm in between philosophies of life, so it's a prickly stage. Ergo, why I have the sudden urge to impose asshole fines to nimrods and fucktards at the Rio.
When I go out partying on Phish tour, my friends came up with the concept of a "Wook Ticket" which is a fine you levy against someone who is doing incredibly stupid shit, committing party fouls, or acting shady in any other arena. Shit, we even give ourselves tickets as a joke, but also as a reminder we need to remember to have fun, but in a semi-responsible way.
I wish I had the balls (and the free time) at the WSOP to hand out asshole fines and "Tampon of the Day" awards. I know a few people who'd be racking up fines and tampons all summer. When I worked on Wall Street, if you complained about something too much you'd get "Tampon'd" or simply put, if you walked away from your desk to go to the bathroom or to a meeting, then you'd come back only to discover that someone taped a maxi-pad to your computer screen. I'm sure some of my readers find that offensive and sexist. And it is. But your daily goal was simple -- get through the day without killing anyone (especially yourself) and make sure you don't say anything that will warrant a barrage of tampons attached to your screens.
I'm at a rough spiritual point, something that always happens three weeks into the WSOP. Luckily, I'm my own boss and call the shots, so I'm counting the hours until embed myself with hippies for a three day music festival on July 4th weekend (a much need R&R before the Main Event). The festival experience is grounding in many ways and restores my faith in humanity and community. Spending the summers in Las Vegas dodging temptation around every corner and writing bullshit about the glorious pursuit of fame and power that is fueled by greed often warps my brain. It seems like every summer is like Dante's Circles of Hell for me as I drop out of purgatory and lose complete sight of heaven.
And it's when I get sucked out of purgatory and spit out into the hell's furnace that I lose faith in people. Michalski used to give me guff that I was a "people hater." He was half-joking, but noticed that I had an unyielding disdain for a significant amount of people. To clarify, I dislike a small group of certain people, but quickly write off anyone who happens to be a malicious parasite, or a black hole for negativity.
One of my biggest flaws is that I used to give people second and third and fourth chances. But after a while, I realized all of this Buddhist tolerance, compassion, and forgiveness malarkey is a load of horseshit. The act of forgiveness allows assholes to continue to act like assholes.
I would love it if assholes actually thought: "Shit, I fucked up, but I got a second chance, so I'm gonna try harder and be less of an asshole."
But in reality, it's more like, "Hahahah. I acted like an asshole and got away with it. Guess what? Now I can act more like an asshole because you're a pussy and a pushover. You're letting me take advantage of you, so I will continue to be an asshole."
When I come to those realizations, man oh man, my blood boils. That's when people I would normally shine on and turn the other cheek will evoke the wrath of my ire. Instead of letting them walk all over me, I will stand up and call then out for their douchebaggery.
One of the most important things I learned in life is that you have to stand up to bullies and assholes every once in a while. Because let's face it -- an asshole is not going to be less of an asshole because you call him/her out on it -- but, they definitely will become a bigger asshole if you let them get away with it.
I try my best to avoid going on people tilt. When Buddha's teachings couldn't help me, I turned to generic Vicodin, Percosett and other painkillers. Man, of man, did those little white pills help out immensely. The biggest jerkoffs and tools that I knew all of a sudden became Mother Theresa. It's funny how an opiated feeling makes you more tolerant of assholes.
I've often referred to Xanax as "crying baby repellent" during plane trips. Well, along those lines, painkillers is "asshole repellent" because when I gobble up fistfuls of pharmies, then and only then, I can be around the worst of the worst because I'm at eternal peace and can't feel a fucking thing.
It took me over 30+ years before I figured out that family gatherings are a lot less hellacious when I'm faded to the tits on opiates. A few self-righteous readers will chastise me for my unconventional behavior because I'm relying on an unhealthy coping method in order to deal with these people, but my counter argument is this -- I don't have a substance abuse problem when these assholes are not around. Ergo, I don't have a drug problem, rather I have a people problem.
Most of the year, I do what I can to avoid undesirable people. But sometimes, like family holidays and difficult working environments at the WSOP, I am unable to avoid contact with said undesirables. Asshole avoidance is impossible. So, you either have to be proactive and attack the assholes by reminding them that they are indeed assholes, or make the conscious decision to kick their ass. Alas, I'm a lover and not a fighter. The last time I threw a punch was during a bar fight in Argentina a few years ago. I don't intend to use violence ever again -- unless the assholes I'm railing against continuously fuck with my friends and loved ones.
I have been seeking out a peaceful resolution and want to coexist with the undesirable tilt monkeys, but when I'm unable to channel Buddha, I numb the pain with synthetic opiates.
No wonder the pharmaceutical companies, Big Tobacco, and the beer makers/booze producers are so fucking rich, because they sell three escapes that the masses turn to when they are overrun by assholes -- which happens to be everyday.
I used to love poker, but I've let a few assmunchers ruin what used to be a perfectly good time. The world is getting weirder and weirder every fucking day. Life is too short to let those fuckers win. It's time to start thinning the herd. Asshole fines will commence immediately.
I made a bet with one of those May 21st Rapture freaks. He bet me that the world was going to end on May 21st because Rapture was imminent. The prop bet is win-win for me. When the sun comes up on Sunday morning, I'll be a little more wealthier (and even more cynical of religious zealots), but if by a slim chance the skies open up and army of angels arrives on the Mothership, then the entire world is fucked anyway and I'll die from a bombardment of fire and brimstone before I have a chance to settle up.
In case you have no clue what I'm talking about, then here's a witty video explaining the hysteria surrounding May 21st...
To answer your question... yes, at the end of the video, there's aliens smoking DMT.
Okay, so moving onto the apocalypse...
The world will end on May 21, 20111. It will also end on December 21, 2012. Then again, if you read Zero Hedge fourteen times a day like I do, you are well aware Tyler Durden has been preaching the end of the world will happen at the end of each trading day.
So who can you believe? Don't trust anyone, especially me.
The end of the world as we know it already happened the day John Lennon got whacked when he was gunned down in NYC by Mark David Chapman. Everything since that cold December day in 1980 has been nothing short of making tiny steps in a slow march toward Armageddon.
I'm envious at how the greatest fear mongers in the world successfully monetized paranoia -- from crooked corner street preachers to that company that created X-ray body scanners. Fear mongers rake in big bucks, because anyone scared shitless with a lot of material items to protect will pay top dollar and practically give up all of their individual freedoms to quell paralyzing psychological fears, whether it's buying a shotgun or enduring a cock check at the airport.
As much as I'd love bilk sheeple out of millions by scaring the bejesus out of them, my mission is altruistic, because I'm trying to use this corner of the web to unplug those whom want to be unplugged. In many ways, it's up to you to determine your path in life and I'm here to remind you there's always another way. Ergo, the Tao, which is translated into "the way" or "the road."
In case you were wondering, we're not going to experience a single cataclysmic event like 2012. There's no invisible brown dwarf or a Planet X (aka Nibiru) or a comet flying by Earth at the end of the year that will make Yellowstone Park explode. Even though the tin foil hat crowd chatter is hyping up a "false flag alien attack" orchestrated by the Illuminati to create a one-world government, well that's definitely not going to happen either.
So what is going to happen on May 21, 2011 and December 21, 2012? Business as usual. Ponzi schemes will continue to run rampant. Politicians will continue to lie to you. The media moguls will rake in billions providing you with propaganda and distractions, while bankers pilfer your retirement funds to pay for their coke and hooker habits. Meanwhile, old powerful men will continue to send young men off to foreign lands to fight proxy wars against rogue states corrupted by the same multi-national corporations that put our politicians into power.
The only difference is more people are waking up after finally exiting the denial stage of "life is rigged" and delving into a volatile phase of anger and rage. From this point forward in the age of instant communication, it will be tougher for the haves to retain their power as the have nots slowly wake up a few million at a time. As a result, the haves will ramp up brainwashing techniques, forge a deeper political and religious division amongst the have nots, and stay in power by any means necessary like creating a kill switch for the internet. Hence the backlash has begun as sweeping violent revolutions flared up in North Africa and the Middle East, along with the ongoing riots in Greece and Ireland as we speak.
Even Americans woke up from their deep opiated slumber as protest movements in Madison, Wisconsin inspired many more disenfranchised and pissed off citizens across the nation to stand up against government corruption. Millions more Americans are on the verge of exiting the denial stage and about to dive head first into a cauldron of anger. The system is broken and we need shake things up and remove the puppets backed by the oligarchs pulling the strings in Washington and in every state capitol.
And that's what the Mayans were trying to tell us -- not that the world is going to end, but rather we're experiencing a massive paradigm shift. For those whom cannot adapt to change, it will seem like the end of the world (e.g. old school newspaper editors) as the systems in which they previously found comfort is on the verge of collapsing. For those who rise to the challenge, it will seem as though they achieved a higher level of consciousness because they were aware of the changing market conditions and either went with the flow (and got lucky) or tweaked their life plan to prosper during the changeover.
Adapt or die.
But zealots like the Family Radio crew have such rigid beliefs that it's no wonder their interpretations of warnings are also rigid in nature. They are predicting rapture on May 21, 2011 because of a rudimentary mathematical formula that Bill Chen could have debunked in is sleep.
Whenever you hear about unproven theories about WWIII in the Middle East, 2012, May 21st Rapture, alien invasions, Planet X, nuclear meltdowns, earthquakes on the New Madrid fault line, or California falling into the ocean, then you essentially have four ways to react to the news.
Your four choices...
1. Accept the end is nigh and freak out by following around a religious zealot or building an Armageddon compound.
2. Accept the end is nigh and party like it's 1999.
3. Ignore everything and put your head in the sand. Rapture? Pffft... did you see what Kim Kardashian tweet'd?
4. Call bullshit on the fear mongers and keep living man. L-I-V-I-N.
I'm a hybrid of #2 and #4. I've been trying to wake up everyone in #3, but not about the Rapture, rather other more menacing things. Alas, some sheep don't want to be disturbed while grazing on mainstream fodder, which is probably best because the last thing you'd want is to see a caravan of millions of self-righteous Family Radio followers blocking traffic wherever they go.
I was going to treat Saturday like any other Saturday, but since I have a bet on the outcome of May 21st as the end of the world, I'm going to be listening to a Judgement Day mix a friend made and paying close attention to the skies to see if the Mothership has returned. I'm excited for an old fashioned stake out while on Armageddon Watch!
I'm making as many bets possible and I'm fading the Rapture.
Roberto Brenes, also known as Robertito among his fellow Costa Ricans, is the youngest son of Humberto Brenes, a.k.a. the Godfather of Poker in Latin America. The shark shtick might have worn out its welcome north of the border, but in Central and South America, Humberto commands the respect and reverence of Doyle Brunson with the added cult-like following of Johnny Cash. Robertito is regular on the LAPT and unfortunately, he was the bubble boy at the LAPT Lima. He was still shaking off a bit of tilt from a the hand that busted him, but was morbidly curious about the validity of Viernes Negro and the news that rocked the entire poker industry on April 15th -- "a day that will live in infamy" for many Americans associated with the online poker industry.
Citizens of Latin America have an extremely polarizing view of Anglo-American hegemony, so many of them weren't surprised with the DOJ indictments, which essentially decimated the postmodern online poker landscape. Latin Americans have been getting screwed over by American politicians, Wall Street bankers, and corporate interests for the better part of a century, so they chalked up the DOJ indictments of Absolute, Ultimate Bet, Full Tilt and PokerStars as another bad beat -- but just one of thousands they've witnessed.
"Los gringos estan con el dedo metido en el culo!" said one my Costa Rican colleagues.
"Si. We the Gringos are properly fucked," I responded. "Online poker is not rigged... America is rigged."
* * *
I sat in press row at the PokerStars.net LAPT Lima, covering the tournament for PokerStars Blog with Short-Stacked Shamus, one of my personal heroes. These days, I'm semi-retired from covering tournaments, instead focusing on fear mongering, trading silver futures, and writing fiction. I reduced my 2011 workload to exclusively covering the World Series of Poker for Tao of Poker, but accepted assignments in exotic locations on the international circuit for the opportunity to visit a new country. I was excited to shake off a little rust and treated the LAPT Lima as Spring Training for the upcoming WSOP. Visiting Peru for the first time was an exhilarating experience, especially a side trip to Machu Picchu, one of the Top 5 locations on my bucket list.
Shamus noted we should have known that the Lima trip was doomed when we spotted a dead body along Circuito de Playas on our way from the airport to Miraflores. The ocean and beach is separated by a highway with 300-foot cliffs looming overhead. I saw a bunch of military guys in berets and combat boots from a distance who stood on the cliff side of the road, where a huge crowd had gathered. My immediate reaction -- workers were on a strike and the military police were there to keep things in order -- but as we got closer and the cab slowed down, a film crew and thirty or so pedestrian rubberneckers gathered around a limp body curled up on the ground.
"Two bodies," said the driver in English.
"Two?"
"They jumped."
I was dubious. Smelled like a hit to me -- maybe they got involved with the wrong guys and were tossed off the side of the cliff? Failure to pay back a loan shark? Drug deal gone bad? Although I only saw one body, I was slightly surprised that the cops did not cover up the carcass. Instead, a news camera guy straddled the body and filmed what appeared to be a close up.
Ten minutes later, the cab made its way up a winding path of cobblestones to reach the top of the cliffs and the affluent Marifores section of Lima, but the image of a desensitized cameraman hovering over a bloodied body still prevailed.
* * *
In January 2007, I was in Melbourne, Australia when the Neteller fiasco went down. It took me two days to sort stuff out with Neteller's customer service in order for them to allow me to access my account (to cash out) while I was in a foreign country, but that crucial lost time screwed me and I got five figures stuck in Neteller. I eventually got my money back ten months later, but I was flagged for an audit the next year. To this day, I don't see that as a coincidence.
I was in London and Amsterdam in September 2008 at the peak of the subprime mortgage fiasco and financial meltdown of Bear Sterns and Lehman Brothers. So, to keep up with my string of being abroad when the shit hits the fan, I was out of the country once again -- this time in Lima, Peru for Black Friday. It was truly a surreal experience being out of America when Shamus, F-Train and I got the news that American online poker was nevermore. Vanished. Nada.
The only comparison I can come up with was how my friend Senor explained to me what it was like to watch the 9/11 attacks in a bar in Vietnam while he was on vacation. You get a hopeless and helpless feeling on the inside, meanwhile everyone around you is sort of thinking, "You had it coming."
Fortunately, my CrackBerry service failed for an unknown reason in Lima. As a result, my phone was not blowing up with calls and text messages from my friends, many of whom were running around like chickens with their heads cut off. The bad beat from my international phone provider was a blessing in disguise because it enabled me to ignore the crisis and focus on the task at hand -- covering a poker tournament -- which very well could have been the last tournament I covered for PokerStars or anyone else for that matter. I wasn't naive about the source of the money that funded the majority of poker media. I worked directly with Full Tilt and PokerStars in different capacities as a freelancer, but the rest of my clients (various magazines and websites) derived a significant amount of their operating revenue from Full Tilt, PokerStars, and UB. Unless they could adapt quickly, this was definitely "last call."
I finally understood what it felt like to be in the band on the Titanic, as they bravely playing on as the ship sunk into the frigid North Atlantic.
* * *
The LAPT is four seasons old, but like most international tours, the LAPT had its growing pains and rough patches. I was in the room when the LAPT Mexico was shut down by the federales, who impounded the tables, chips, and millions of dollars worth of film gear belonging to 441 Productions.
I hope that you never have to hear... "Pack up your computer, grab all your things, and get the fuck out of the room ASAP!"... but that's what I heard the last time I was in Mexico. I vaguely recall that moment, trying to be super slick and removing my press badge as I rushed out of the tournament room right behind Otis and my girlfriend, thinking that not having a press badge around my neck would save me from incarceration, or worse, ending up in a mass grave with all of the other troublemakers in the media that happen to cross Los Zetas.
But that was in December of 2008 when El Presidente Bush Dos was a lame duck. This was 2011 -- in a new era, basking in the warm glow of El Presidente Obama's hope and change. Life, liberty and the pursuit of online poker was supposed to be different, right? Little did we know, it was Obama's cronies on Wall Street that would ambush us -- in more ways than one.
In the race for supreme domination of the poker world, Full Tilt and PokerStars were ensconced in a cold war with an ongoing arms race to determine which one would bow down to the other. I always saw Full Tilt as post-World War II America -- a bunch of G.I. Joes, real American heroes -- an emerging super power, fresh off a tremendous victory crushing fascism, while spreading freedom and commerce across the globe. PokerStars always reminded me of the United Kingdom of the 19th Century -- driven by imperial colonialism, where the sun never set on the Empire -- especially after Stars rapidly expanded into markets propelled by their international tours (EPT, APPT, LAPT, NAPT) and regionally-branded circuits (ANZPT, UKIPT, etc). At times it seemed the Stars empire was stretched too thin, hence why I got the call as a hired gun to cover the LAPT Lima, mainly because their blogging A-team of Otis, Change100, and Howard were covering the NAPT Mohegan Sun.
Even with the news of Black Friday and the subsequent disintegration of the NAPT, I knew that outposts like the Latin America were going to get a marketing boost. Job security never seemed more prevalent for my friends on the LAPT. Looking around the tournament room at the Atlantic City casino in Lima, Peru, the poker world continued on with the all the ordinary sights and sounds of poker in Latin America... one guy in shorts, flip flops, tank top, and a brimmed Panama hat was all-in and slammed his open hand on the table three times as his opponent in an Argentinean soccer jersey cruelly slow-rolled him, and while the dealer dealt out the flop, the guy in the hat continuously banged his hand on the table and begged for a low card by screaming "Chiquitita! Chiquitita! Chiquitita!" at the top of his lungs.
Business as usual.
* * *
When Spanish conquistadores led by Pizzaro first arrived in South America, the Incas did not fight them and instead welcomed them. The Incans viewed the Spanish visitors as gods from their lore because of their unusual white skin and bushy beards. That critical error became costly for the Incans.
In the 1530s, the Inca Empire was torn apart by its own civil war, which gave Pizzaro an edge in conquering the region, thereby pilfering Peru of its natural resources including gold and silver. Some Incan leaders were dubious from the moment the Spanish arrived and wanted to kill them by setting fire to their barracks when they slept, but those opinions were opposed by their king, Atahualpa, who walked blindly right into a trap.
In this analogy, I can't decide if the politicians or the PPA are the sleeping Spanish conquistadores. We all know the elected jackals in DC are used-car salesmen by day and pimps by night, willing to whore out your grandmother for $14 if they could get away with it.
And don't get me started with the PPA. They lost me at hello, when they couldn't even figure out a simple mission statement. I've never seen an opening strategy so poorly executed since Greedo shot first in the Cantina Bar on Tatooine.
What was the point of even sending the PPA to Washington? Instead, we should have sent a hundred masturbating chimpanzees to lobby for online poker -- they would have accomplished the same fucking thing as the PPA, but at least we'd have some cool YouTube videos of monkeys jerking off on the steps of the Capitol.
* * *
"You don't elect politicians to commit crimes; you elect politicians to make your crimes legal." - Matt Taibbi
Something was rotten in Denmark and it wasn't the batch of used condoms rotting underneath Gus Hansen's bed. It was the foul stench of the UIGEA as it got queefed out of the collective arses on Capitol Hill. Sure, we all knew that Arizona Senator Jon L. Kyl was a genuine teetoller and well-known opponent to all forms of gambling, but Jim Leach (R-Iowa) was a virtual unknown at the time. In 2007, I didn't do my due diligence, otherwise I would have discovered that Leach served for six years as the head of the powerful House Committee on Banking and Financial Services. It was during that reign when Leach drafted an act that eventually led to the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis.
In 1999, Jim Leach sponsored the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (a.k.a. the Financial Modernization Act), which repealed provisions of the the Glass-Steagall Act (a piece of legislation put forth in 1932 the wake of the stock market crash of 1929 which created the FDIC in addition to other safeguards to prevent future Ponzi schemes). Leach's bill essentially eliminated a provision from Glass-Steagall that made it illegal for a bank to also own financial firm.
At the time, everyone on the street knew that the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act was created to allow Travelers (insurance company that owned investment house Salomon Smith Barney) to merge with Citigroup to create Citicorp -- the largest financial services company in the history of banking. When President Bill Clinton signed the Act in 1999, no one anticipated that the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which allowed banks to own financial firms, would eventually lead to the creation of complex derivatives, which nearly imploded the entire financial system. Warren Buffet called those derivatives "financial weapons of mass destruction."
In the parlance of our times, those degen donks on Wall Street took advantage of their bitch Jim Leach, and orchestrated the largest smash-and-grab job since Danny Ocean and his misfits knocked over the Bellagio.
I overlooked Leach's connection to Wall Street banks when he introduced the UIGEA. At the time, most of the ire was directed at Senator Jon Kyl and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. If there was ever a man that was more hated in poker than Russ Hamilton, it was Bill Frist. To this day, one of the funniest pieces of vernacular to come out of the UIGEA was the term "Frist Fucked," because after he attached the UIGEA to the Safe Port Security Bill, he gave online poker players deep, penetrating, fist fucking... wrist watch and all.
With spotty internet in Peru, I asked my girlfriend to assist me with a little research about campaign contributions. All of the information she gathered is public knowledge available on OpenSecrets.org. She posted some of her findings over at Pot Committed in Follow the Money: Online Poker and Political Contributions.
Check out Bill Frist for yourself and take special note to the #1 contributor to his combined Campaign Committee and Leadership PAC in 2004 and 2006...
Bill Frist (R-TN) - Top Campaign CMT & PAC Contributors: 2004 - Goldman Sachs ($109,999) 2006 - Goldman Sachs ($142,249)
From the years 2004-06, Goldman Sachs dumped a quarter of a million dollars into Senator Frist's PAC. No need to hide those marionette strings... they lead right to CEO Henry Paulson and his den of thieves at Goldman Sachs.
The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere. The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.
I'm sure the tin foil hat-wearing, silver hoarding, Max Keiser disciples are going to love this, but I'm sharing this thought that has been bugging me ever since I dropped acid at the top of Machu Picchu....
A cabal of Wall Street bankers including the Federal Reserve colluded behind our backs to sink the online poker industry by paying off politicians to push forth the UIGEA.
It's pretty fucking obvious. The Big Banks control everything, which is why I don't understand why the majority of the poker community is misdirecting their anger at politicians. It's like a flashback to my Catholic school days when Sister Mary Margaret got pissed off at one of the special ed kids because he took a shit in the urinal. All the Hail Marys and Our Fathers in the world weren't going to change his mental capacity.
Yes, Virginia, I just said politicians are retards who can't figure out where to shit. They've always been corporate shills, so transforming into self-righteous twits (a la Michael Moore) and hounding politicians is futile because their power is limited to what their corporate overlords will allow them. In essence, the more powerful the politician, the shorter the leash.
You really should be pissed off at the Big Banks. They pwn Obama, and in essence, they also pwn your ass.
Before the FBI hauls me off to a FEMA camp the moment I set foot back on American Soil, please watch this short documentary film titled The American Dream. And if you're not a documentary film type of person, don't worry because The American Dream is actually a 30-minute quick tutorial (in a snazzy, snarky cartoon format) on the shadow banking industry and the long, powerful reach of the Federal Reserve.
* * *
Why are the Fed and the Big Banks on Wall Street the bad guys?
Well, have you looked into Ben Bernanke's eyes? He's evil personified and makes Alan Greenspan look like St. Francis of Assisi. Bernanke has been printing so much money with his magical printing press that a $100 bill is really worth less than a sheet of toilet paper. Single ply.
The philosophical main directive of Big Banks has always been to control the flow of money. That's the key to understanding Black Friday -- it's not a political issue -- it's a money issue disguised as a political issue. Those suits are clever motherfuckers and implemented a classic divide and conquer strategy. While we were too busy arguing about politics and personal freedoms, they were pushing the DOJ to snoop around. But then they got lucky -- they might have been snooping around for another four or five years if a tip about Daniel Tzvetkoff's whereabouts didn't fall into their laps, and then the scared rat quickly rolled on the online sites.
By the way, anyone want to set over/unders as to when Tzvetkoff dies in a mysterious car crash? Or perhaps he has an unexpected heart attack? As Fat Tony would say... "Accidents happen."
Besides controlling the flow of money, think about all those potential transactions (and more importantly transaction fees) that the Big Banks are missing out on. Remember that parody commercial from Saturday Night Live about the bank that gives change? At the end of the clip, the banker says, "How do we make money? Volume."
Thanks to Chris Moneymaker, hole card lipstick cameras, and a disenfranchised computer-savvy populous, the online poker industry in America practically blew up overnight and to its own detriment, the industry grew too big, too fast. Millions, no wait, billions of dollars were being passed around, back and forth, between players in countries all over the world.
But when it comes to controlling the flow of U.S. dollars, well, that's the Big Banks' racket, and just like in mafia movies, the online poker industry never payed homage to the Godfather and his crew. They should have cut them in, because if and when the heat closed in, the online poker industry would have had the protection of the Godfather.
Sure the DOJ might be sniffing around Wall Street about some of the fraud and shennigans perpetrated during the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis, but have they indicted any of the major players? Will they? Doubt it.
The problem I have with the indictments was not that the DOJ went after the online poker sites for committing fraud, but rather that nearly every company operating in the financial services industry has committed fraud and gotten away with it. It's impossible to police the entire financial sector, but selective enforcement of the financial fraud is absurd.
I'm reminded of an NFL Films clip from the 1980s of former Tampa Bay Bucs coach Sam Wyche. He pulled a young offensive lineman aside and chewed him out for getting a couple of holding penalties during their last possession. The player pleaded, "But Coach, I'm holding on EVERY play." Wyche deadpanned, "Then keep doing what you're doing, son!"
That sums up Wall Street, or rather the rampant financial fraud that occurs every single day without being policed.
If the DOJ and the feds are going to turn off online poker because of fraud committed by the parties involved, then shouldn't they shut down the entire derivatives market until it can be regulated and monitored? Shouldn't the top cops investigate the biggest incident of fraud in history and the subsequent fleecing of American people?
* * *
In the poker world, when Bobby Bellande, David Benyamine, or Eskimo Clark goes busto, the entire community doesn't bail them out. But in the modern financial world, if one of the big boys runs up gambling debts they can't pay, well, they get billions of dollars in bailouts from the Federal government, which in theory comes out of your pocket.
I refuse to pay for TJ Cloutier's losses at the craps table, but to put things in perspective, what if Phil Ivey, Durrrr, and Phil Galfond lost all of their bankrolls betting on Jai Alai? And Howard Lederer decided to take out 50% of everyone's Full Tilt bankroll, without your consent, to get Ivey and Durrr back in the game against crazy Scandis? You'd be pretty pissed, right?
Luckily, those sorts of practices don't happen in poker. Capitalism is applicable every day in poker because we allow those undesirables to fail. Those with money continue to play another day, but those without funds get stuck on the rail until someone is stupid enough to give them a stake. Alas, the end of the day, the money should get distributed to the better players. Although the player with the most short-term luck might get the money that day, over the long haul the money should flow upward to the best of the best. Should flow -- and that's the beauty of poker because at any given time the wealth can be redistributed from the haves to the have nots. It frequently happens in tournaments when the donk du jour comes out of nowhere to win. You would like to think that that money will flow back into the poker community and return to the coffers of the poker haves, but it's going to take them a little time and effort to regain those initial losses. That's what is supposed to happen on a level playing field.
We've seen different aspects of the financial markets manipulated or rigged in favor of the plutocrats, so the money flows out of the hands of the have nots and right back into the grubby hands of America's oligarchs. In some instances, like with ARM mortgage loans, the have nots never had a chance against the modern day robber barons.
Proponents of the Nanny State claim its up to the government to save our souls from the evil clutches of poker, because if you didn't know... online poker is rigged. For fuck's sake, are we that stupid? Lotteries are the biggest sham since taking insurance in blackjack, yet brokedick dreamers line up around the corner to blow a day's wages on a "dollar and a dream."
Then again, these are the same sheeple who bought Snooki's book. Try explaining to the orange spray-tanned Jerseylicious crowd exactly how Moodys and other ratings agencies rated bundles of CDOs as AAA (the highest rating indicating the lowest risk), and then the Wall Street brokerage houses sold those toxic derivatives to clients (from Arkansas to Dusseldorf) and at the same time, the suits turned around and bet against the same investments they were selling in the form of credit default swaps.
The more I think about it, the redistribution of wealth is something that the richest families in the world have been fighting against since the dawn of calculated wealth. Hence, why it's always been a primary motive for the banking elite to control the flow of money, but more importantly, to control the flow of money away from the have nots.
Poker, especially online poker, posed a threat to the banking elite and kleptoocrats in charge because the community itself would determine (through cash games and tournaments) how the wealth would be distributed. At the same time, online poker created an alternative currency. How many times have you swapped T$ or traded money on one site for another? For my March Madness pool, friends paid for their sheets with online poker transfers. I've paid prop bets with Full Tilt transfers and a high percentage of my freelance clients often paid me with online poker transfers.
Ever since the Bretton Woods gathering during WWII, when the U.S. dollar became the world's reserve currency (abandoning gold), it's always been crucial for the Big Banks to control the flow of money. Nixon took the U.S. dollar off the gold standard and since then our currency has been backed by the U.S. military. To further keep tabs on the oil-rich nations, any crude oil purchases had to be made into U.S dollars. As a result, Petrodollars flowed out of the Middle East and flooded Wall Street banks. These days, Narcobucks (laundered money acquired from the sale of illegal drugs) and Petrodollars are the only real deposits keeping the banking industry humming (don't get me started about Ben Bernanke's printing press and his quantitative easing policies that have juiced up the stock market like Barry Bonds on the Clear). A few years ago, two of the biggest banks in the U.S. (Wachovia and Bank of America) and HSBC in London were laundering billions of Narcobucks for the Mexican drug cartels. Did any of those suits go to jail? Nope, they got a few slaps on the wrist and paid paltry fines that paled in comparison to the billions of Narcobucks that flowed through the banks.
You've all seen The Wire, so you know how the hustle works.
But what about PokerStars dollars or Full Tilt dollars? What about the alternative online poker currency that the industry created out of thin air? That's a no-no. Only Ben Bernanke and the Fed have the power to create and distribute wealth. The Big Banks want to wrap their slimy tentacles around your T$ and online bankrolls. Narcobucks and Petrodollars aren't enough. Their hubris is our downfall. Unfortunately, Stars and Tilt failed to cut the Big Banks in for whatever reason, and that didn't make the Godfather and the rest of the shylocks very happy.
So who is the Godfather? In 2006 it certainly wasn't the head of the Fed, Alan Greenspan, because he was a Randian, name-dropping, social-climbing muppet for the banking elite. He's no better than the current Fed chairman, Ben Bernanke. The head of the Five Families was Henry Paulson, former CEO of Goldman Sachs before El Presidente Bush Dos nominated him as the Treasury Secretary in 2006. Since then, the big cheese has been Lloyd Blankfein, the current Goldman Sachs CEO.
Yes, Blankfein has the juice and the online rooms never paid the Godfather his cut, so he mercilessly castrated the entire industry.
To sum up... Jim Leach had been a trustworthy puppet after he allowed Big Banks to degen it up once he helped repeal provisions of the Glass-Stegall Act, which eventually nearly crippled the entire financial system with the catastrophic fallout from the subprime mortgage crisis in 2008. And with another more innocuous bill, Leach stemmed the money flow in and out of online poker sites. Instead of putting a severed horse's head in his bed, the boys at Goldman paid off Senator Frist to guarantee that the passage of the UIGEA. At that point, it was a matter of time before the vampires at the Fed and the Sack sucked the blood out of the poker economy.
* * *
So what's next?
If the current principals (Stars and Tilt) and former (Party Poker) want a shot at obtaining the smallest percentage of action in the market when the federal government (or individual states) eventually legalizes online poker, then they need to partner up with the banking elite like Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan. That's where PokerStars and Tilt screwed up by dumping money into the pockets of lobbyists and politicians, and then teaming up with land-based casinos. The online rooms should have wired their bribe money directly to Jamie Dimon at JP Morgan and Lloyd Blankfein at Goldman Sachs. Those two are the Phil Iveys of financial deception and fraud.
JP Morgan is the OG aka the original gansta. My favorite JP Morgan story? During the Civil War, he bought defective surplus rifles for $3.50 from the government and then turned around and sold the same defective rifles back to the Union Army for $22 a pop. That's huge fucking balls and an indication of the type of highly-trained professional criminals we're dealing with here. The bloodsuckers on Wall Street are the type of criminals that the online rooms should've allied themselves with the entire time or at the very least, hired as consultants to pick their brains about how to commit fraud and never get caught.
The online rooms grossly miscalculated and jumped into bed with the snake oil salesmen in Washington, who crudely took turns cornholing them until they all bled out.
It could have been a beautiful union -- online poker rooms and Wall Street, where Goldman Sachs joined forces with PokerStars and continued their imperialist quest for global dominance. It could have been very simple if online poker was legitimized and PokerStars got taken public by Goldman in one of the biggest IPOs since the dotcom bubble. Instead of a laughable union with Station Casinos, Full Tilt could have teamed up with JP Morgan to create FullMorganTiltPoker.com, meanwhile the shylocks at Goldman would have partnered with PokerStars to create GoldmanPokerStars.com... where if you win the Sunday Million, then Goldman opens up an IRA for you at no charge.
That's where Stars fucked up. Steve Wynn was never going to be their savior, but Lloyd Blankfein could've been their sugar daddy.
* * *
Black Friday was a sobering reminder that the poker industry fell for the ruse that politicians were the linchpins who controlled the future of online poker, but in the end, the banking elite continues to tug at the strings of the muppets in DC. Writing your local politician does nothing except stroke their ego because they know with every email and letter, they are treacherous criminals who found another sucker who thinks they wield any power.
Unfortunately, it's rather difficult to get an audience with the Jamie Dimons and Lloyd Blankfeins of the world. Alas, your only way at inciting a revolution is to bring down the banks from the inside. I know a fringe group of financial anarchists who want to crash JP Morgan by gobbling up physical silver. I can't say for sure if that tactic will work, but silver (and precious metals) is a wise investment as a hedge against inflation and a devalued dollar. In the end, if hoarding silver helps bring down a major Wall Street bank, especially the ones responsible for tweaking the livelihood of my friends -- then so be it -- off with their heads.
Believe me when I tell you that you're not the first group of people to get fucked by the banking junta. Look around on forums for Anonymous operations, read ZeroHedge.com, follow @TaoFear on Twitter, watch videos created by Truth Never Told (especially Your Indoctrination and The Rigged Game [see video below]), and talk to friends outside of poker -- because you'll discover that there's thousands if not millions of people with similar bad beat stories.
If somehow, someday, we can all figure out how to come together and incite true revolutionary change, then we can overthrow the La República del Plátano that Wall Street installed in Washington. Our first order of business would be the dismantling of the Fed and wrestle free of the suffocating death grip of the banking elite. Maybe then, and only then, can we finally begin to live in truly free society.
Online poker isn't rigged. America is rigged. What are you going to do to fix it?
Every once in a while, a lyric gets stuck in your head on constant repeat which becomes more distracting than entertaining, and eventually drives you utterly insane. When I was in college, the Captain Crunch theme song invaded my brain for an entire semester. I blamed the ether that one of my fraternity brothers stole. His nickname was "Luggage" and he swiped ether from the chem lab. My inner axis shifted ever so slightly after that brief experiment.
At the present moment, there's a catchy hook playing on a constant loop inside my head...
Waiting for the time when I can finally say That this has all been wonderful but now I'm on my way But when I think it's time to leave it all behind I try to find a way but there's nothing I can say to make it stop
The song is aptly titled Down with Disease and performed by one of my favorite bands. I dug the title so much I considered using it for the Las Vegas manuscript, and at one point the working title was Down with Disease: The Redneck Riviera, Existentialist Conversations with Strippers, and the World Series of Poker. Luckily I came to my senses and determined that Lost Vegas was more appropriate title.
My disease du jour is sports betting. I haven't had an itch festering so badly since the Spring of 2007. My monthly income was much higher four years ago when I was grinding cash games online and before the fall out from the UIGEA completely squeezed the freelance writing market. I often used the Charles Barkley defense back in 2007 -- "You don't have a gambling problem if you can afford to lose." I didn't necessarily have a losing year, but I experienced a few massive swings that negatively altered my mood and extracted all the fun out of the process of sports betting. I miraculously emerged from the bender with a profit, but I got lucky because mostly everyone else in my situation crashed and burned before they ate the pavement when they hit rock bottom. I had enough semblance to slam on the breaks when I was ahead before it got too late and I ended up another senseless tragedy of Sophoclean proportions.
But that was four years ago in what seemed like a galaxy, far, far, away.
The fucking itch is back. The feeling can only be described as if a small monkey burrowed itself underneath my skin and it's trying to kick it's way out. The omnipresent itch is threatening a mutiny. All out anarchy. Itches create leaks. Leaks create messy problems. Messy problems induce life tilt. Life tilt leads to depression. Depression leads to self-destructive behavior. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
Sports betting is a huge life leak, but it's also a life sweetener, or a bottle of hot sauce that spruces up mundane aspects of daily life, which is why it's inherently dangerous. Finding the perfect balance between entertainment, merriment, stroking the ego is essential to healthy lifestyle. It's when you cross over the proverbial demarcation line in the murky, cloudy grey area that you takes strides away from the light and rush toward the dark.
Sports betting is a vacuous vice that sucks you into a vortex of degradation and spits you out into the musty basement of a church, sitting in a semi-circle, sipping a sludge-like substance masked as instant coffee, and re-hashing bad beat stories with other recovering addicts.
Betting on our national past time of baseball is dangerous because of the 162-game season starting in April and ending in October. Football is condensed into Sundays (with a bail-out game called Monday Night Football, one of the most evil inventions ever created) and bettors have a week to make a decision. But baseball is an everyday temptation, just like junk food and vapid reality television. Despite my many battles with multiple vices and frolicking on the perilous fringes of Sin City, I somehow avoided betting on baseball. I had drawn a line in the sand and it was baseball. I knew that whatever morally hazardous behavior I engaged in would always be kosher as long as I wasn't betting on baseball. It had become my self-imposed Mendoza Line of sports betting.
That is, until a week ago.
I sent Mendoza his pink slip. I embraced the relaxation of the rules just like the thugs on Wall Street celebrated when the Glass-Steagall Act was repealed in 1999. Within a decade, Wall Street gamblers nearly imploded the entire financial system after betting on the unregulated derivatives market and repackaging toxic debt as low risk investments.
Sometimes inside information is too damaging because it entices you to take risks you normally would never otherwise. Greed is one of the most rehabilitating of the Seven Deadly Sins. Greed is Gordon Gekko's mantra and the primary cause of the majority of self-destruction in the financial and gambling world. I've been privy to a barrage of tips over the last week. I set aside a tiny portion of my March Madness surplus and decided to fart around on a few games here or there. My plan was to wait until I got tipped off to what Billy was steaming... if the time/points were right, then I'd tail his pick. I entered the Killing Fields with every intention of being an "opportunity investor" by taking advantage of added value due to fluctuations in the betting lines.
It takes money to make money, and I was aware of the hazards of betting on baseball. My buddy Plump is a very savvy bettor and former college player, so he gave baseball shot a few years back. The results were not good. He got an ass whooping. A different friend of mine lived in Vegas in the early 1990s. He and his college buddies using a computer model to predict run totals in baseball. After a horrid losing streak a month into the season, he spiraled into hell and by Labor Day, he had become a full-blown heroin addict. Talk about a pair of pillars of death -- being a junkie and a degen baseball bettor.
I studied the so-called prospectus and accepted every risk before I took the plunge. I opted for a conservative route on Opening Day and cherry picked the best of the best. One game. Just one game. Alas, the monkey's itch flared up. Searing jolts of vibrating anxiety rocketed throughout my body and I succumbed to the impulsiveness of the inner action junkie. The revolution had begun and I also bet on CC Sabathia and the Yankees.
Viva la revolucion!
That was such a rube mistake, yet I pulled the trigger anyway, intoxicated on three decades of loyalty to my Bronx Bombers. I knew better than to bet on hometown teams, especially the Yanks, because every sharpie in Vegas will preach that east coast teams (Philly, NYC, Boston) in every pro sport are usually overvalued because of the stubborn-fanatic following by their lifelong fans. Millions of them. Betting like mushes. As a result, the punters on the east coast bet with their hearts instead of their brains, which is why I always went the opposite route, the road less traveled, and faded my hometown teams as an emotional hedge. Little did I know it was the correct strategy that the wiseguys exploited for decades.
I nearly jizzed myself after an auspicious start to the baseball season, going 2-0 with a well-informed bet and an impulse buy. The moment of glory was short-lived and the slide began. I lost one, then another, then another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another.
I whiffed on ten consecutive bets.
I couldn't believe it. Wait, what? Ten? Are fucking shitting me? How can you lose ten baseball bets in a row. Overs shit the bed. Unders shit the bed. Aces got smoked. Chumps looked like Cy Young. I felt like one of the players on Butler chucking up brick after brick during the championship game.
The 10th consecutive loser nearly shattered my left testicles into seven thousand pieces. I had bet the Pirates and sweated the action courtesy of my girlfriend's swanky iPad and my newly purchased subscription to mlb.tv. She had just left for a trip to NYC and fortunately left her new toy with me. I had unfettered access, but instead of dicking around on Angry Birds or playing backgammon, I fired up the MLB app and streamed the Pirates-Cardinals game. I freaked out the hipsters who lived upstairs from us every single time I shouted, "ARRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!"
They must hate me. If it's not the random expletives I scream at the television, it's probably the Tito Puente records that I blast at 3am. During the game, I chatted with Mean Gene, a lifelong Pirates fan, who sat in his local corner pub and played video poker while the game flickered in the background. We were trying to determine which one of us was having a more pathetic existence. I felt as though I was the biggest loser in the world who wasn't a TEPCO executive. After all, Mean Gene lived in Pittsburgh and was a life-long fan so his actions were perfectly acceptable behavior, whereas, I was a self-absorbed degen gambler who should have been writing fluffy pieces about the poker industry, but instead, got schwasted, ripped bingers, and didn't blink twice about betting on the yellow marauders.
"Go Pirates! ARGGGGGGGHHHHH!"
The Pirates lost -- sigh -- and for a moment I understood the emotional turmoil that plagued Pirates fans for decades. I had walked a mile in Mean Gene's moccasins (well maybe not a mile, but at least nine inning worth) and when the Pirates made the final out, a rumbling lingered in my stomach, like the nauseating moment before you puked up a batch of lime-green bile. Alas, I keep my cookies down and regain composure, but for a moment I understood why beleaguered Pittsburgh natives escaped their summer of despair by extolling the quarterbacking virtues of a known sexual predator.
0-10. Sweet Jesus. OH. FOR. TEN. Talk about one of the worst streaks in my entire life -- and it happened in less than 100 hours. I smacked my head on the pavement. Rock bottom, eh?
I had to quit. Cue the bass line to Down with Disease.
But wait...I'm not a quitter. I'm stubborn and stuck it out for another day. I finally snapped the losing streak and improved to 3-10. I kept firing away, but once I reached 5-15, I reluctantly threw up the white flag. It took a lot of courage to surrender because it's so friggin' easy to keep firing away...and firing away...and firing away.
I try to find a way but there's nothing I can say to make it stop.
On Thursday morning, my CrackBerry chirped a dozen times. Text messages. Vital intel from a friend in Vegas. He updated me on morning line moves, but I was still foggy and groggy at that hour to pay attention. I stayed up late, too late, eating spiked brownies and hitting the hash pipe during four hours worth of Ken Burns' documentary on the Civil War (I got sucked into the 1863-64 campaigns and determined that Sherman was a far better tactician than Grant). I passed out shortly before dawn and could have used an extra half hour of rest, but Thursdays in the major leagues is also get-away-day which meant that a lot of teams scheduled early afternoon ballgames. The first one was slated for 12:35pm ET or 9:35am west coast time. I never told my bud that I was going to stop betting on baseball. I crawled out of bed and eventually stumbled into the coffeeshop to grab a quick breakfast before the Yankees-Twins game started at 10:05am PT. I got distracted by the TV in the coffeeshop that reported a 7.4 earthquake in Japan and I missed a valuable window of opportunity to tail a pick that the betting syndicates were pummeling -- the UNDER in the Reds/Astros game. I mentioned the tip to Iggy and he said "Great American Ballpark is a hitter's park" and that 8 runs was vulnerable. The syndicates moved the run line from 9 to 8. I didn't like the number but it didn't matter because by the time I tried bet, the first pitch had been thrown and I got shut out.
Murphy's Law would have told ya that the final score was going to be 3-2. I missed a winner by thirty seconds. Fuck me. I needed to get my fix somehow after getting shut out, so I quickly forgot my ban on baseball betting. I decided to fade the public and bet against the 0-5 Red Sox. The -190 moneyline on the Sox was inflated because of 1) east coast bias, and 2) everyone was betting with the 'Sox have yet to win a game, they have to win eventually' mentality. I bet the Indians the other way for +164. I really put in that bet expecting to lose. That's no way to live life -- expecting to lose like that -- but something extraordinary happened and the Indians won a nail bitter by the score of 1-0, and the Sox dropped to 0-6 for their worst start since 1946.
Yes, I won my last ever baseball bet.
And that's my last bet...for now. The difficult part begins while I resist the urge, the temptation, the insatiable desire to be taunted by that fucking monkey who is hiding somewhere underneath my skin. If you keep scratching an area on your body long enough, you will eventually draw blood.
Something supernatural occurred the moment that my plane landed in the Bahamas. My buddy Storms failed to convince me that his cooler abilities were responsible for hexing me, even though he was coincidentally present when something amiss affected games that I wagered, whether it was the Knicks, Ravens, or Butler.
Fucking Butler.
My blood continues to boil thinking about the poignant bad beat on Butler. Storms and I were the only ones on the island who bet on that "added game" at the Atlantis sports book, and we even moved the line a half a point. Instead of blowing our winnings at the Coral Lobby Bar, we looked like chump stains and tore up our losing tickets. Butler failed to cover, shit, they didn't even win the game. We got our testicles stomped by a mid-major squad that barely had a winning record.
Why the hell was I betting on Butler in the first place?
The answer is complex, disturbing, yet predictable.
If I saw more than three episodes of LOST, then I could come up with a witty allegory linking sports betting and Hurley's numbers that would explain the downswing in Bahamas. However, something unearthly happened on the island, and I'm unable to pinpoint the whats and whys. Until I can find some answers, I'm wandering the vast wasteland trying to pick up the pieces of my shattered betting life.
I ended 2010 riding an emotional high with a heater. Everything I bet was golden. Silver futures. NFL. NBA. College Hoops. European Team Handball. I even bought the fucking dip! It was one of those streaks that bettors dream about. During the streak, I heeded sound advice from Buffalo66 on college hoops, and an acquaintance who works in a major off-shore sports book down in warmer climates clued me on any major lines moves in the NFL. I devised a half-baked system for NBA games (always betting against Washington on the road, and betting on the Knicks on the road especially when they are dogs). I also reduced the amount of bets on NFL games to only two every weekend: one big bet and a small bet. In poker terms, I played fewer hands, but aggressively played the ones I selected.
With positive aspirations for the new year rattling around my head, 2011 started off just how it ended -- en fuego. I planned on doubling my bankroll at the sports book in the Bahamas. Instead, the streak was halted, when I slid into a sinister black hole of suck.
If I could have one special power it would be the ability to peek into the future. I can't tell you how much I'd abuse that special ability for evil purposes by gambling on the financial markets and on sporting events. Although I hated all of the sequels to Back to the Future, my only favorite scene/storyline is Biff getting his hands on a sports almanac from the future, which he uses to become one of the most successful sports bettors in their alternative universe.
Man oh man, if I could only have the ability to see the future for one week -- I'd quickly amass a fortune until all of the bookies and sports books cut me off, then I'd have to pull a Billy Walters and hire hundreds of runners to make bets for me in Vegas.
Accessing the future for my own financial gain is an unattainable pipe dream. I meet people all the time in Vegas and in poker circles who claim that have foolproof systems for blackjack, roulette, the horses, stock options, etc. I've met lots of shit-talkers, but I've never crossed paths with a legitimate psychic who can accurately predict the future. Believe me, I scoured the world for a seer and found lots of charlatans, but came up empty.
I experienced a clairvoyant encounter one late night after I ate too much Adderall and had a lengthy conversation with Oma, aka the ghost of Change100's dead German grandmother. My favorite place to write in our apartment is the dining room table that belonged to Oma. If you put your palms on the table, you can feel it vibrating with energy, which is the primary reason why I love writing at it. Oma's spirit is heavily attached to the table because it was the center of many of her happiest memories. Almost one hundred years old, the heavy table is made out of solid oak and it's a bitch to move. They definitely don't make furniture like that anymore, and these days you're stuck with Ikea's disposable crap made for pennies in a Chinese sweatshop out of balsa wood.
When I'm sleep deprived or jacked up, I can feel the presence of my girlfriend's dead grandmother. Oma always started conversations in English, but then trailed off into German. I didn't understand what she said and politely asked her to return to English. I'm not going to lie to you -- I've tried to angle shoot a ghost. I pestered, prodded, and grilled Oma about the future. Unfortunately, she was unable to tell me the outcomes of the next day's basketball games. I sensed that she was uncomfortable with my devious questions. I didn't want to upset her because the last thing I needed was a German spirit haunting me the rest of my life. I dropped any gambling talk during our other encounters. We mostly talked about her childhood in Munich and how she didn't like it when I made Nazi jokes (although she loved the Gestapo Knock-Knock joke, wich is only effective if you can do a perfect German accent).
Knock. Knock. "Who's there?" "Zee Gestapo" "The Gestapo who?" "Vee vill be zee onez asking zee questions!"
Unable to get ghosts to spill the beans about the future, I found myself back to square one and just another lowly piker. I take out my gambling frustrations in literature where I dream up alternative dimensions where time travel is possible and I earn millions betting on games that I already know the final score. Maybe I'll eat a shitload of speed one weekend and write a Philip K. Dick-inspired pulpy-sci-fi screenplay that is a hybrid of Time Cop meets Bringing Down the House -- the Gambling Police from the MGM/Mirage Junta are leaping through worm holes to track down an eclectic group of rogue time traveling gamblers (including ringleader Seth Rogen, a random hip-hop artist to play the wise-cracking sidekick and be the token black guy, and a well-known British actress in the role of the bald-headed savant pre-cog).
The Bahama Incident has been bothering me ever since I returned to California. Maybe it's because I was on the fringe of the Bermuda Triangle that my betting mojo is all out of whack? Maybe I lost all of my run good and it got transferred to my girlfriend? I'm thrilled that she shipped the PCA Ladies Event for a well-needed score, but while she was experiencing the winner's high, I was slumming the the loser's doldrums. I blew through two dimes as my bankroll got decimated and I got beat down like a Russian dissident. Every single wager was a heart breaker and the brutality did not let up. I hoped that the losing juju remained on the island, but somehow, it lingered and the losing streak carried over into the following week. I couldn't hit a bet last week and my mood grew from grouchy to sullen. When I finally nailed a much-needed slump buster, it was a total suck out with a fortuitous break (two missed free throws from an excellent shooter). In the ensuing days, I struggled with a string of .500 days. Breaking even on paper (6-6 in the NBA) is nothing to be proud about because all of the juice adds up in the long run. Sure, I finally stopped the heavy bleeding, but I'm still dragging ass while ensconced in a break-even malaise.
The blood trickles ever so lightly.
Just like in poker, whenever I'm mired in a sports betting losing streak, I reverted back to basics (A-B-Cs of gambling), and carefully scrutinized m betting history to identify and plug any leaks. I accounted 25% of my losses to overzealousness, greed, and junkie tendencies when I bet on games that I had no business betting. But it's harder to say no than you think, when I'm in a distorted reality. It's difficult to refrain from action during a losing streak because when I finally win bet, I instantly try to kick-start a new streak and attempt to get some rhythm going with an additional bet. At the same time, never underestimate the gripping effects of walking away when you're chasing a loss. That's a sign of a problem gambler, and that's what separates the Big Dogs from the annoying yapping poodles -- knowing when to push your edge and knowing when to walk away.
I chalked up 25% of my recent losses to poor bet selection and impulsive decision-making, but was I really variance's bitch on the other 75%? Or was I just getting bad intel?
It doesn't matter if it's the lottery, stock market, roulette, or sports betting because everyone who is a frequent participant in a gambling event feels as though they have a rock-solid system that will make them a winner over the long term. The demoralizing aspect of losing never deters them, in fact, it makes them even stronger in their blind conviction that the gambling gods will finally even things out for them after years of futility and they'll hit a monster score. Casinos make billions of dollars every year in slot machine revenue on gambler's misguided faith.
That gambler's philosophy is why my grandmother played Lotto twice a week from the time that New York installed it to the day she died. While on her death bed in the hospital, my grandma still inquired about her numbers. Gambling is truly in my blood; Lotto was last thing on my grandma's mind before she entered the hugest lottery of them all: heaven, hell, or purgatory.
I was raised Catholic and we're supposed to believe that our time on Earth will determine our fate in the afterlife. We supposedly in control of our destiny. Our moral or immoral actions will lead us to in one of three places: heaven, hell, or purgatory.
I had many internal discussions on the afterlife, including inventing a controversial theory about purgatory and reincarnation. My theory is this: we are not actually alive, but rather, we are dead and Earth is purgatory. Our current consciousness is in a state of purgatory and we're all old souls (or to simplify things, we're ghosts) living out a temporary existence in our current forms before the powers to be determine if our collective soul is going to heaven, or going to hell, or doomed to roam purgatory for the rest of existence (albeit in a different vessel). Essentially, depending on how you view your existence, purgatory can be also be heaven on Earth or hell on Earth. But if you're caught in a dead end job and unable to escape from the grapples of your mundane existence, then you've officially been exiled to perpetual purgatory.
And no, I'm not on speed or psychedelics at the present moment, but, I will admit that during one mind-melting incident at the set break of a Grateful Dead concert, I formulated my theory of existence -- that Earth is actually purgatory and we're just lost souls in a waiting room.
Some day I hope to find out if I'm correct or if I'm totally wrong. In the meantime, I gladly bet on meaningless sporting events to cure the tedium in life's waiting room. If we're reincarnated spirits hanging out in physical vessels awaiting a transformation into a more superior form of consciousness, then why would I waste my time doing anything else except partying it up and gambling nonstop?
You just witnessed the philosopher inside my head jump behind the wheel of the bus, as he made a solid existentialist argument why I should engage in bad behavior and just be. That convincing fucker gets me into a lot of trouble, but I'd get into more if I wasn't engaged in an on-going battle against a cabal of eight voices in my head....
1. Gordon Gekko is the slick-haired snake oil salesman who may or may not be a plant from the devil and a distant cousin of Stuey Ungar. Gekko is compulsively clad in striped shirts, polka dot ties, suspenders and a belt. He constantly pressures me to bet more and take bigger financial risks like attempting to corner the cocoa market.
2. The Philosopher is a doppelganger for the Dude from The Big Lebowski. He's always convincing me to say "Fuck you!" to the Man, goof off and get stoned while pondering life's deepest mysteries. He frequently parties with aliens and encouraged me to learn Mayan so I can converse with them via my third eye.
3. The Moralist looks just like Fr. Duffy, my high school theology teacher. He's tall, lanky, wearing a black suit and white priest collar. Whenever I screw up, he waves his wrinkled finger in my direction reminding me that God will condemn me for my sins. I usually don't have to worry much about Fr. Duffy because the committee inside my head is mostly atheist, so they tie him up and toss him in a utility closet so they don't have to hear his incessant sermons.
4. The Artist is a mix between Salvidor Dali and Andy Kaufman. He sports a funny mustache, carries around a couple of pet ocelots, wears a white jumpsuit, and talks in foreign accents. The artist is constantly brooding with vicious mood swings but he's responsible for creating grandiose images in my head that I try to replicate in word form. It's not easy painting the word picture with keystrokes, yet somehow, the artist nudges me to create something out of nothing even though it's a painful process for me to extract and execute his concept. When I say I have five or six major projects inside me, it's really the artist scribbling down a "To Do" list on a blackboard inside the hallways of my mind. The artist calls me a sell out when I take a quick buck for less than what I'm actually worth as a writer. He calls me a fraud when I can't think of anything original to say, and he's the one who encourages me stray away from the herd.
5. Gaia influences my nurturing side. She looks like Meryl Streep circa the 1970s, although I have no idea why, it just is and she has perfectly shiny hair. Gaia is part siren, part muse, and part Mother Earth. Gaia-Meryl speaks to me in contrasting yet impeccable accents. She gets on my case when I treat women like shit in my scribblings or when I buy bottled water. She also reminds me to call my mother on holidays and not to use the c-bomb in the company of other women.
6. My ever-important Legal Counsel sounds like President Bartlett from The West Wing. Yep, I have Martin Sheen's voice with Aaron Sorkin's rhetoric rattling around my brain when I'm bombarded with complicated legal matters. He talks me out of the Fortune Bonus in Pai Gow and tells me not to speed more than 10 miles over the posted limit when I'm "driving dirty." My internal attorney also talks me out of foolish pursuits including get-rich-quick schemes or writing a book about the Mexican drug wars.
7. My Id is a mixture of Homer Simpson, Bluto from Animal House, and Holden Caufield. That amalgam is the reason why I'm wasted most of my waking hours and think everyone is a fucking phony. My id acts like a cocky fraternity brother who gives me guff when I want to leave a bar and go home early, and he questions my manhood when I consider declining a third hit of liquid sunshine.
8. The Cigarette Smoking Man (CSM) is controlling my super-ego because he's the guy who secretly governs everyone else. The CSM (similar to the character from The X-Files) manipulates the other voices, who in turn influence and tell me what to do, but all along, I think it's the other voices who are responsible, when in fact it's the CSM's master plan all along as he lurks in the shadows. Maybe he's God's messenger? Or a microchip implanted by the CIA? Regardless, the CSM is mastermind who drew up the plans to Take Over a Politically Unstable Country in Six Easy Steps, but used Gekko as a proxy to persuade me to take decisive action in trying to corner the cocoa market. The CSM is the one who confirmed alien existence, but tricks the Dude into telling me about the aliens. The CSM is the most dangerous voice inside my head even though I barely hear him talking. He whispers mostly. When he speaks (it's in a pronounced British accent and I suspect he was a former Shakespearean actor) all of the other voices listen attentively. I had not heard much from the CSM in the last few weeks aside from last Sunday morning when he matter-of-factly uttered, "Bet the Packers of Green Bay and buy cocoa futures."
That's an accurate run down of the eight prevailing voices inside my head, sort of inspired by the canceled FOX sitcom Herman's Head (a Freudian-inspired comedy featuring a protagonist who battles with his inner personalities). My life is doubly complex which is why I have a committee of eight trying to steer me on the proper path in life. More voices exist, like the one Spanish-speaking woman dressed up like Charo who yells out the most random things. I probably should learn more Spanish to figure out what she's saying, because who knows, maybe she's giving me tips on college hoops? I have no clue why she's there or what her purpose is, but until I can figure that out, I just drown out her voice.
I'm still in a rut and unable to break free from the shackles of a losing streak that has haunted me since I stepped foot on Paradise Island. Despite my conversations with ghosts and the voices inside my head, I have been unsuccessful devising a system to see into the future. For now, I rely on my instincts, sift through stats, listen to tips from friends, and filter out all of the chatter inside my head to figure out who I should bet in the Super Bowl.
Green Bay or Pittsburgh, that is the question, right?
Shakespeare summed it up best: "Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles."
Posts
