Oh Jesus, he's really gonna do it.

I have to, guys, I'm sorry. I just gotta say something about this damn election thing coming up. If we lived under a tyranical government we wouldn't have "the biggest election in our history" every year. None of this partisan bickering, none of these horrible ads on TV, and no useless conventions every four years.

The polls are about even. Republicans are gonna vote republican, Democrats are gonna vote democrat, and moderates are gonna vote... well, see that's the problem. This election falls in the hands of those who sit on the fence. You know, the dreaded independants, all those Nader voters. In 2000 Bush seduced the moderates with his "compassionate conservatism" campaign. Regardless of your opinion of what happened in FL, Bush would've had zero chance at the white house if it wasn't for the moderates, even if he did cheat.

So what wins a moderate's heart? It's a little bit Christianity, a little bit of taking in God we trust off money. It's a little bit the fact that the 9/11 report placed blame on intelligence and not the administration, a little bit the fact that there was a 9/11 report in the first place. You beginning to see the problem with wrangling the moderate vote? Right now even the moderates are split fairly evenly. Scary.

Economy, security, and Iraq. That seems to be the order of concern, according to all those ridiculous, skewed polls, anyway. As for economy, Bush hasn't been the greatest, I freely admit, but things getting on track now. As for all of Kerry's claims of creating jobs, we just don't know. It's actually the grayest area of concern in my opinion. The current administration is rebounding from recession and we really have no idea what so ever whether or not Kerry's will even be able to keep improving. Of course, if we were all Michael Moore, there wouldn't be any doubt.

Security is a toughy because if Kerry wins he will likely reap the benefits of having a system in place that Bush put there, and had to live with the kinks in untill they were worked out. Kerry will appoint a Homeland security advisor, and he will no doubt use the advisor's advice and service to accomodate the country, BUT, the homeland security office wouldn't even exist if it wasn't for Bush. So who gets the points on this one? When it comes to 9/11, the blame to be laid there is squarely on the intelligence community. Not Clinton, not Bush. Believe me, I would much rather have that tragedy blamed on one administration than on the lifeblood of our country. Intelligence has the been the most relied part of ANY administration for pretty much the entire modern history of our world, and it fucked up. Big time. At least if it was the Bush administration's fault, the question of who to vote for wouldn't even be a decision at all. If you can't stand all the security measures that are in place now because you think they infringe on your freedom and you use that as a crutch to vote for Kerry, you're just ignorant. The security programs that are in place now will never go away, and no matter who sleeps in the white house this time next year, they'll probably keep getting more and more invasive. I've been saying it forever, you just can't have freedom and security. It's an either/or thing, not an and thing. I, for one, am annoyed at some of the security programs in place, but the american people have chosen. We want security. To get it, we give up freedom. The more security, the less freedom. You can hate it, but it's not Bush's fault, and it's not gonna be any different with Kerry at the helm.

Now, Iraq. I'm almost afraid to think about it, let alone write about it. I supported the invasion, but my support was based on the fact that Iraq had those dreaded weapons of mass destruction. I know this is where all you liberals are gonna attack Bush for misleading the nation, but it's not that easy. Bush supported the invasion because Iraq had WMDs, congress supported the invasion because Iraq had WMDs. You know, congress, all those people that YOU put into office. Those people that speak one voice for all their constituents. Democrats, republicans, liberals and conservatives alike voted to go to war, let's not forget that. Congress backed the war because congressmen had access to all those reports from the CIA that said Iraq did in fact have WMDs. The same reports Bush read every single morning. The CIA was wrong. When George Tenet sat behind Colin Powell as Powell addressed the UN Security Council and fed him information, and passed him documents, the CIA was wrong. When our allies supported our decision, and went to war with us, the information our allies got from OUR information was wrong. Bush didn't mislead the american people, the administration didn't mislead the american people, all those senator and representatives didn't mislead the american people... Bush, the government, and all those senators and representatives were misled. There will be people out there who blame Bush for problems that have been going on in our intelligence community for years, problems ranging from the sharing of intell to jurisdiction disputes, all I ask is that you not be one of those people. If you vote against Bush based on the war in Iraq, make it be because of how you felt about it before we went. Because now, well, we're stuck there. Bush, Kerry or Nader, US Troops stay in Iraq.

So we're right back where we started, who do you pick? I'm picking Bush. Have fun being mad at me. Peace.

The only thing better than meat and potatoes...

... is meat and meat.


I'm bored.

If I knew how to spell that crap Elmer Fudd says at the end of those Looney Tunes cartoons, that's what I'd put here.

Swimming in the Shark Tank

The best part about this resurgence in poker popularity is that everybody thinks they can play. Watch a tournament on TV, or play a little online, and suddenly you're the guy they made the movie Rounders about. I absolutely love it.

I play in a weekly cash game, been playing there for years with the same group of people, since before hold'em really took over the scene, so we've got a huge head start on some of these guys who think they're experienced because they've been playing online for two months. Our group is talented, our styles vary, and we've got an insatiable appetite for fish. Last night we sat down at an all you can eat seafood buffet.

Personally, I got down a bit early, but there was no way I could bring myself to get up from a table with so much money just sitting there begging to live in my pockets, so I reloaded a little bit, tightened up, and went to work. There were a couple new people, and a couple guys who had been around a bit before but keep coming because they need the practice. They see us win a bunch, and of course they want in on the action. And, hey, wouldn't you want your money back? Other than the couple guys who stick around, gain experience, and actually become good players, our game is like a revolving door. You here about the game, sit down for a couple sessions because you think, "how different from the internet, or how different from those little nickel-dime games i've been in can this be?" Well, it's different. Just because you saw Phil Ivey do it on the World Poker Tour doesn't mean you can pull the same move off. I can't do what Phil Ivey does because Ivey is an emotionless, aggresive player who's very hard to read. I'm a sneaky guy who uses other player's reads on me against them. It's a variation of style. That's the difference between my group and your average player; we don't do the same things the guys you see on TV do because we're not the guys on TV, and we know it. We do the things we'd do if we were there.

I seem to have babbled on again. The particular group of people at the table last night was unusually lucrative for the group. I came back from my little deficit, and along with 3 other players from the regular group, we broke 4 people and demoralized 2 others so badly that they left before they were broke. Cash in at 7pm and before you know it it's 4am. What a wonderful nine hours it was.

I'll be on tour someday, maybe I'll never be a top money winner, or a regular at the final table in the World Series, but I'll be there. It seems an unfair irony, because untill I get there, I'll just keep knocking down other people who are thinking the same thing.

It's 2pm, I just got out of a bed a little bit ago, and I've got 2 messages about getting a game together tonight. I'm not sure if I'll go play again today, but sometimes it's really hard to pass up. When have you ever seen a wolf turn down a chance to lay with lambs?

Why I shouldn't have an advice column

Dear Railbird,

You know the movie Coming to America? The one with Eddie Murphy about an African prince you gets sent here to "sew his oats"? You know the wedding scene where that funny looking little guy is singing? More specifically, do you remember what that funny looking little guy looks like? Because I do, and that's exactly what my new boss looks like. What's worse than the fact that my new boss looks like that is that my new boss is female! Female I tell you! She's maybe the single strangest looking woman I've ever seen. The advice I need is what is the best way to deal with my urge to laugh uncontrollably every times she's around, which thankfully isn't often. What should I do? How should I act? It's hard for me to supress my humor, and when she walks in all I want to do is start singing "she's my QUEEN!!!" like in the movie. This can't possibly be good.

Sincerely,
Railbird


Dear Railbird,

I do remember Coming to America, it is a classic. My advice to you about your new boss is simply this: laugh. Laugh till your heart's content, but do it when she's not around. You should wait till she walks in the office and ask her to sing that song for you so you can videotape it, show it to all your buddies, and tell them that you met a celebrity at work. Right after you ask her, start quoting lines from the movie and press her to come sing at the next wedding you're likely to attend. Wouldn't that be a wonderful wedding gift for your closest friend? You should also type up an email and send it out to all your co-workers outling your suspicions of your new bosses past occupation, because in my opinion, they all have a right to know the history of the person that is now giving them orders. I hope I've helped.

~**~


And what the hell is it with people thinking I'm Hispanic?!?!?!?!

I'm sitting in the office today, reading the paper, and I notice a bunch of people outside the window. "Hmmm", I say, "I'm gonna go ahead on out there and see what's going on." So ahead on out there I go, and Sandy Alomar Jr.'s outside signing autographs for some old fans. (For those that don't know, I work at Gateway and the White Sox are in town). When he gets done with the autographs, he walks up to me and starts asking me a question, which would be fine except he was speaking Spanish! He was speaking english to the fans and then he walks up to me spouting off in spanish! SPANISH!!! I don't even look Hispanic. Sheesh.

so i'm drinking iced tea...

... and I come accross this. I laughed so hard, I choked on the iced tea, passed out, and had a dream about almost voting for Nader. Almost.

A little bit o' news, and now there's blood on my shoe.

Since I'm not Rueters, I'm gonna go ahead and paraphrase.

Militants Kill Bulgarian Hostage in Iraq

The Tawhid and Jihad group, led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (the English translation of this name is Crazy Ass Fuck. Loosley, of course.), beheaded a Bulgarian truck driver after **SURPRISE** Bulgaria refused to withdraw their troops. I repeat: THE TROOPS STAY! Which is great because this means sooner or later we're going to kill these fucks.

~

On the local front, an Ohio National Guardsmen was killed and another injured in a convoy ambush. I wouldn't usually put this in here, frankly I'm sick of hearing this shit, too, but the wounds to the injured guardsman are just ridiculous. This guy took shrapenal wounds from a rocket propelled grenade. 300 of them. Not a typo, 300 holes in this guys body. He was the commander of his unit, and as soon as he hit the ground, he started shouting orders to return fire to his troops, crawled his ass up to the cab of a jeep, prayed, and started firing on the enemy himself. After a 10 minute firefight, the way was clear for a medivac chopper to come airlift him and his fallen comrade to the hospital. I can't believe this guy lived! 300 wounds! Personally, I hope he gets a chance to put 300 hundred holes in some bastard militant.


I'm sick of news. I'm not sure I really want like posting about things that are actually happening. Oh well, now to the blood on my shoes.

Someone hit me. In the face. I got very, very angry. When I laughed at him in front of a crowd of people, he hit me again. That's about as far as my temper will stretch, so, I did what any red-blooded Christian would do, I threw him on the ground and started kicking him in the face. Everyone thought this was incredibly funny because no one likes this guy, but after they all realized that stopping wasn't part of my immediate plan, someone grabbed me from behind and seperated my shoe from dipshit's noggin.

I'm a nice guy, who has tried very hard to control my temper. It's working, too. I haven't even raised a fist in more than a year, let alone actually fight. I've had plenty of chances, too, but I've done well. But you can't just hit me like that. Say what you want, call me a name, I can get over any of that shit... but actually hit me? I didn't even do anything after he hit me once, other than point out he was a big pussy by laughing at him, but twice? How could you possibly think that you're not gonna have a fight on your hands when you punch someone like that? Did he honestly think I was just gonna fall down and start begging him not to kick my ass? Now I gotta clean my fucking shoe. Good thing they're black, or I'd be even more angry.

Now I'm all calmed down and mellow again, and although I did lose my temper, I'm not that worried about this kind of thing becoming a habit. I know I have it if I need it, and that's good enough for me. Let's all hope he calms down, too, the last thing I need is him starting shit over and over again.

I'm gonna go watch the All-Star game now.

BOO! 

a sign of the times

we want you! 



here we are again, together in my blog. things will be changing around here, and even though i normally fear change almost as much as i fear spontaneously combusting while pumping gas, i think some change might be in order 'round here.

The first thing I think I'll do is start experimenting with using capital letters when needed. In the spirit of saving time, and my loathing of the dispicable act of having to slide my left pinky over to the shift key constantly, I've grown used to just typing in all small letters. Or maybe I'm lazy. Either way, I'm fairly sure that having the entire body of whatever it is I have to say go without a single capital letter (unless I'm emphasizing something, you know, like "FUCK YOU!!"), makes me look fairly ignorant in the eyes of my reader. I mean, how many times have you opened up a book written by a respected author and not seen a capital letter? And while I'm thinking about structure, I should probably also do something about the fact that I usually leave out apostrophes while I'm writing. dont, cant, isnt, wont... That looks pretty stupid, too. While I'm positive that apostrophes are vile little creatures that have set out to take over our lazy, contraction filled language, I think it's about time i start using them. I say this because no matter how smart never using a contraction makes you sound, I'm not doing it. I refuse to stoop to the manipulation of language to enhance someone's opinion regarding my level of intelligence. Eh, who am I kidding, that's exactly what I'm doing.

Another thing I'd like to start doing is actually writing about things. While I'm sure I'll never entirely get over my penchant for idle rambling, whether it be about work or just stupid shit that happens in the course of my usually fucked up nights out, I would like to at least try to tackle some other issues. Something other than the fact that I'm trying to watch sports on the news and the damned sound keeps going out on this piece of shit TV I have sitting next to the computer. Why I bother watching local news sports when I have ESPN, ESPN2, Fox Sports Net Ohio, and the freaking internet to check up on things with is a mystery even to me, but that doesn't change the fact that this damn TV is a rotten, horrible shithead out to thwart my effort at sating my sports appetite. I would feel much better if this TV would kill my appetite for pizza and beer, but like I said, Mr. I'll-show-you-pictures-but-won't-give-you-any-sound isn't being very cooperative.

I also recently unlocked the secrets of photo hosting. I know that I'm probably the last person on earth to figure this out, all I can say is, "I have pictures now, too, so all you pretentious, holier than thou computer geeks can go ahead and plant your lips right between my gobstoppers and suck!" Along with having pictures when I want them, I'll be changing around the blog in general. Just the general look of things will probably get all mashed around some, hopefully for the better, although I'm aware of the risk of being a moron and making it look a pile of horse vomit (for those of you that are into horse vomit, please realize that in this context, horse vomit is the putrid emptying of every oat Mr. Ed has eaten in the last week. I say again, this is a bad thing).

Now I've got to go do something about my profile, and hope I can undo the duct-tape customizations I've done to my blog and get my profile back up. I think I may just start putzing around with this template.

I know it's so damn muggy outside it's like walking around in an aquarium, but ya'll go ahead and try to have a good day.

PEACE

tell me i'm a dick

saturday morning, i'm in a real sour mood. i'm at the mall to get some sunglasses and a shirt for today, and even though i'm at the mall on a saturday morning, i'm fairly certain that everyone in the mall can tell i'm in a sour mood. except, of course, for the ever tactless breed of cell phone kiosk sales people. there's 7 cell phone kiosks in our mall, this is how my shopping trip went.

"excuse me sir!"

i walk by.

"what cell phone service do you have?"

i walk by.

"i can save you money! i guarantee it!"

i walk by. as i'm walking by, this is what i hear:

"hey, if you don't want to save money, then it's your choice to be stupid."

that's when i turn around.

"listen, fuck, i'd rather pay 200 dollars a month for shitty service than have to deal with a company full of assholes like you. shutting your fucking mouth would be the best business decision you've ever made."

go figure, a cell phone salesman actually shut up.

so on i go. sunglasses girl is cute, that was nice, but i think she just humored me into buying something. she said they looked good, and regardless of her intentions, that was good enough for me, because i have absolutely no idea what looks good on my head when it comes to sunglasses. i figure the best thing for my face would be a full coverage mask with tinted eye holes, but since they dont sell those this far away from halloween, i went with what the cute girl told me to buy.

so now i'm wandering aimlessly around the mall looking for some sort of shirt to wear today. that's when some kid bumps into me. i did exactly what i always do, i say, my bad, and i keep on walking. i didn't think anything of it untill this kid and his buddies start following me into stores. now, to get the full effect, you'd have to understand the kids i'm talking about. long ass hair, all in their faces, dressed in all black, jeans, long sleeve shirts, the whole goth-vampire-i'm an idiot look. el bumpo's even wearing a shirt that says, in big dripping blood red letters, even my family's scared of me.

getting followed by a bunch of self important punks who're probably dreaming about casting a spell on me, or maybe pulling a sawed off out from underneath their trench coats, is beginning to bother me. so i did what any rational man would do in my situation, i turned around and bumped into him again. he looked like he was going to start saying something to me, so i bumped into him again. his mouth opened, i bump. mouth, bump. by now his friends are getting antsy, and so is he. so i pull his coat/vest/ripped up something or other open, pointedly notice what his shirt says, and i say, you dont scare me.

it's amazing what a simple sentance will do to a kid who wanted to act like a tough ass in front of his buddies and didn't really expect confrontation.

so i just walk right through him and into the cd store where i found a duke ellington cd that i'd never heard of. nice. i bet after reading this you never would've guessed i like jazz. but fret not, i'm still a dick.

i promise i'm not this stupid in real life

go figure my ankle's not healed. let's go work out i think to myself. no, that would be bad because you're still lightweight fucked up, my smarter half pipes in. oh c'mon you big pussy, go play! i have a hard time not listening to the idiot in my head sometimes.

at least i didn't hurt myself, i just took it easy and worked up a good sweat. it's just that i'm aching now. and i smell like ass, but that happens alot anyway, so i think i'll be ok.

on the work front, i'm really not looking forward to going tomorrow. van halen is gonna be in concert tomorrow night, and that means i have to deal with all their fucking semis and vans and buses and groupies and shitty drivers and self important coordinators and the like. bunch of idiots. here's a typical conversation:

Van Halen Driver: let me go down there!

Me: no.

VHD: dont you know who i am?

Me: no.

VHD: i'm the head truck driver for van halen's concert set up!

Me: so.

VHD: so let me go down there!

Me: no.

VHD: this is fucking bullshit. this place is a shit hole. i'm going the fuck down there right the fuck now!

Me: listen asshole, there's two ways this can go. you either go sit in your Goddamned truck and wait for me to tell you what the fuck to do, or you drive through the gates, end up at a closed door and GO TO FUCKING JAIL!

VHD: fuck you.

Me: no.


on the bright side, i'm taking a dietary supplement that makes me act like a total fucking moron, so at least tomorrow will be interesting.

after all this writing, i still smell like ass. i'm gonna have to take care of that pretty soon. is it bad when you're too lazy to take a shower?