Perspective, TILT.

You know, I steam home after a few frustrating poker sessions, and then have to put it all in perspective. I met up with some old friends on Thursday night, and found that my friend Steve's degenerative retinal disease is getting worse. He'll probably be blind by the end of the year; and meanwhile I'm annoyed that the pompous doucheball in the 2 seat spiked his 5 outer on the river against me, or that the quiet cockchuckker in the 7 seat rivered his flush (and I didn't pay him off - DYKWTFIA?). I can take a bad beat, but perhaps the best play I've made in each of the last two sessions I've played was to get up and leave when I realized I wasn't playing my best poker.

Tonight, as I TILTED toward the subway, and commended myself for leaving a game I wasn't enjoying, I remembered that I should keep it in perspective - I'm sure Steve would love to be able to sit in a 2-5NL hold'em cash game and lose the money I just lost - but he can't see the cards. As my buddy Leeroy once put it, after listening to Third Eye Blind's Semi Charmed Life, "We lead semi-charmed lives," and by that he meant, we lead CHARMED lives...

I have great wife, the best dog around, financial security, and my health. Knock on wood.

So every time I TILT myself and get mad that I smooth called instead of raised, or made a shitty payoff on the river, I'll think of Steve - and the fact that I deserve a big "fuck you" for sweating the little things.

My Dad reads my blog on occasion now - he's an elementary school teacher (for a few more weeks at least! He's retiring after 30 something years at the end of the month!), and his school's Internet filter blocks this site sometimes. I'm sure this post will cause it to be blocked, because I'm about to unleash a stream of FUCK YOU's, but, in the words of Tom Cruise's Joel Goodsen in Risk Business, "Sometimes you just have to say "What the Fuck?""

I try not to give stupid celebrities any more breath than they deserve, but I figure some of the latest news deserves a few FUCK YOU's.

Lindsay Lohan - REALLY? You get arrested for DUI and you're not even old enough to drink? Really? FUCK YOU! How the fuck do you crash your car driving drunk when you're underage... and YOU'RE LINDSAY FUCKING LOHAN?!?!?! Can't she hire a driver? THIS tilts me... "Kid Dynamite, what's the big deal?" you ask... Yeah - as long as Lindsay just keeps driving into trees, no harm no foul - but drunk driving is far from a victimless crime, and I don't think I need to get preachy on this. She should do some time in the joint, and have to poop in front of other people, (and toss the salad, of course.)

Jerry Buss - seems like a decent guy - but gets arrested for drunk driving a day after LL. Come on Jerry - you're worth about a billion dollars, play high stakes poker with pocket change, and bang chicks less than half your age - do you REALIZE how much you have to lose? Hire a fucking driver!

In other news - have you seen the new Streetview feature on Google Maps? They don't have it in every city, but basically what they did was drive around in a van with several cameras on it, and build a visual map database similar to the "virtual tours" you see on real estate sights - only this is basically for the world... eventually. Pretty awesome.

I'm a little worried about the future of American society. Sports Illustrated used to have a weekly sidebar titled "This Week's Sign of the Apocalypse," - and if the new shows Pirate Master and Sunset Tan don't qualify, I don't know what does.

until next TILT,

KD