For all of my adult life, my filing system for sensitive documents and correspondence has been to just toss it all in boxes with the hope that I would one day buy a shredder. Thirty years on, that day has come. I've spent the last two days just shredding and watching movies (with the subtitles necessarily on due to the noise.)

So I ran into a lot of my writing from my early and mid-twenties, back when I wrote in pen in notebooks, and boy is it bad. I've been told that mortals like myself need to write an incredible amount of bad stuff before I can get good, and that is certainly the case. The lion's share of novels, short stories and poems went right into the shredder after I had skimmed them for a paragraph or...well that's it, just a paragraph was all I needed.

Most embarrassing was my poetry phase from my mid-twenties. I remember spending an inordinate amount of time and grinding effort crafting and honing these fifty or so just awful pieces. I even had the audacity to send some of them out to poetry journals and whatnot. Good lord, the cockiness and narcissism of my youth makes me blush. Maybe two or three out of the fifty poems were not immediately 100% cringe worthy.

With what I've learned of editing over the last quarter century, I might be able to make something of those few. I'll post just one of them here, mostly as it was written, with some light editing and with the solemn promise that I won't post any more poems itt.

This might be the last poem I ever wrote. It's about a real kid; a friend of one of my exes. The title is the article headline from the Boston Globe on 1/22/96.

Cape Youth's Screams Ignored. Boy is Found Dead; LSD Use Suspected

I never knew you, Jeremy
Til the paper said they found you
Naked, face down, frozen in a ditch
Your classmates say they'll miss your high-pitched laugh
Your grin, your art. Your small frame on a big board
Skating, the world flashing past

Last night you barrelassed straight in the face
Of a god so grim and vast
Your soul alone in the torrent
The torment of direct experience. Hard ass reality

Babbling and alone stinging rain bouncing
Off asphalt spread with cursed sand
You tore off your clothes and screamed
The names of those who loved you not.

Change of plans on the move: no one is renting out small vans for one-way cross country moving. Only the larger panel trucks are available for that. Renting one of those would be a waste of cash given my lightish-packing plan.

I'm going to pack a 7'x7'x6' container and have them ship it. Sadly, I won't be able to make that quality time road trip with dad.

I'm still running good on the plane flights. I have some United points available and I asked my brother to book a one-way ticket to Las Vegas for me. He has a distinct talent for finding good deals. I figured the 4th of July proper would be a lightly traveled day, and this is what he came up with for 50k points and $80 USD.

poetry is hard

really really f*cking hard

and no one reads it

My poetry is awesome.

It was 90% a waste of time, and maybe 10% of it helped me get a feel for finding words and rhythm and how they worked together, and more often how they didn't. If people want to work on that 10% part, I would recommend writing rap lyrics nowadays.

You need to bump your world traveler thread in BBV when you're done with Spain, which is soon, I believe?

I should, but I'm lazy. All the photos in that thread have also disappeared which sucks.

I know that feeling very well. Images make up half the narrative in my old nit-tastic tales thread, and some time last year photobucket decided to pull the hosting and hold the images hostage for $300/year or something like that. Last month they sent me the equivalent of a piece of a finger in an email.

Hello,

We have listened to you, and significantly lowered the price of the Photobucket plan offerings.

For a limited time all of your 3rd Party Hosted Images have been restored. Please login to choose the plan that best fits your needs to continue hosting your images.




I'm with Imgur now. Hopefully they don't pull the same type of brinksmanship.

I got a haircut yesterday at an old-school type barbershop. The business itself is newish (est. 2014), but they've quickly grown to be one of the most popular clip joints in this part of the state. The place is always crowded at all times of the day and week, so I've taken to calling in appointments a week in advance.

Up until now, they've done a great job on the noggin, but on this run I spent the whole time chatting with the barber about Las Vegas, and I think it rubbed off on his work.

Behold, the Fallout 4 pompadour wig brought to life.

Nice hair SJ. Mine could not decide between gray and bald so it picked both.

TY robert. I've had the widow's peak and the swooped back sidelines for as far back as I can remember. I always thought it would be completely gone by the time I was 30.

You have a good set of hair for a mid 40s dude. You are lucky, I will be bald by your age

Sammy didn't come in yet and gave you a speech about becoming a bum? He's probably jealous of your hair...

The ladies don't expect a full hairline from guys past a certain age.

Success>Looks as you get older.

Mine is only the second best middle-aged bbver hairline pic to date. Your unyeilding Prussian Line pic from a year or two ago is still best.

My hairline is better than yours.

Lots more greys though...

You never know how much crap you have until you have to move it. I took about 20 oversized contractor garbage bags worth of junk and donations out of my one bedroom apartment, not to mention a small trailer's worth of unused furniture. How is that even possible? The place didn't exactly look like the set of a hoarders episode. I did have a porch, but that in itself wasn't chock full. You could walk around the place without having to walk over things.

Anyways, the remainder is all in one of these 'relocubes'.



It's packed up to the everloving gills. My family showed up and helped load it, bless them. I will be unloading it myself in Las Vegas a few days after July 4, with temperatures likely in what they call the 'teens': 110°-118°F (43°-48°C). I'll just take it slow and bring plenty of water.

You're going to need to post a pic. All the cool old kids are doing it.

It's pretty clear women are the superior sex when they have less body hair and more hair hair. No arguing against that!

(Soft) Moving Day

I'm here in Las Vegas, flew out today. My stuff is in a shipping cube, currently in Albuquerque. Hopefully it doesn't take a wrong turn from there. It's due here next week. For now I'm roughing it at the new place with a bedroll, 1950's boy scout sleeping bag, pillow, toiletry basics, a few days worth of clothes, laptop and a few hundos for buyins. It's a modest beginning.





I should probably go out and play tonight.

And they usually smell nicer.

Congrats on the move SJ!

You’re more humble than I and that will benefit you. Get out and play this evening there’s still a couple decent days of fish left at the WSOP/rio plus the Wynn, Venetian and PH all have tourneys going so cash games = fish chasing buy ins back.

Go get paid N-Bomb

Thanks Nat!

I made a few rookie mistakes. Firstly by wanting to avoid the Strip with their fireworks shows and the attendant parking issues. I drove out to Red Rock Casino instead, where they were running a fireworks show and had blocked off their parking lot.

Back to to the Orleans then, which has a pretty soft 1-3 game, though nobody drinks there at night. (-$100) running aces into 52o on a 522KJ board. He never raised, just let me value own myself for a fair chunk--nh sir.

Go get 'em, Suited!

I woke up this morning and was hit for the first time by the full implications of what I have done. I am not on vacation. There will be no going home after this. There is no 'after this." This is my home now.

So I went to work.

Mirage $1/2: 1-4 PM: Pounding limpers is my business, and business is good. No big hands, just chipping at it. +$133


Ballys $1/2: 5-6 PM: Bad table, with nearly all average to good regs and no legitimate fish. I quickly found that I was the chippee at this table. I played my minimum one hour and scurried away. But before that, one hand of interest happened.

A good reg opened $12 in EP and a decent reg called in MP. I called on the button with 44

Pot $39

Flop A94

Good EP reg bets $25, MP folds, I make it $60 to go. Good reg instashoves for my remaining $180.

Pot: $339. So I needed 35% equity.



All I could figure in real time is that it was close, and it was my last orbit. I hate getting stacked on my last orbit.
(-$108)

Treasure Island $1/3: 8-10 PM:

On my left, a very good LAG kid with excellent hand reading skills. On my right, a very unpredictable German LAG who changes gears like a pro and knows when to barrel, when to get out of the way and when to show up with the goods. As a matter of fact, German LAG strongly reminded me of 2+2 poster LAG over in LVL, so much so that I checked the sub when I got back home to see if he had an active TR going (he doesn't).

This time, rather than running away like a scared nit, I stayed and took careful mental notes on all of these two guys' deft shenanigans. I wanted to learn something today, and I was willing to pay for it.

Those two were absolutely running the table. I was card dead as hell, but I managed to pull a nice all in bluff on German Lag on the last hand of my last orbit, kind of making up for my cowardice in the last session. I showed the bluff then stuck around for one more orbit out of courtesy.
+$60

Thanks Sheep

Is it true that you quit your job? Will you be staying in Poland or moving back home?

I think that assigned range is way too tight, you will see hands that you beat here much more often than you think. Tbh I think that's pretty much a snap against all but the biggest nits. In addition to a lot more one pair +FD, naked pairs and FDs in live poker especially small stakes poker you should also account for random spazz hands cos peeps are bored, drunk, want to go soon or w/e and generally don't come to fold. Yes, sometimes you will see the flush here and it will hold and suck D, but that's just the way the game works, if you fold these high variance spots so easily you will lose a ton in equity and be open for exploitation