Suitedjustice's Ongoing Mid-life Crisis
I woke up in the middle of choking to death again; though to be accurate, it was towards the end of the process--woke up right away in a white hot panic with black spots of permanent unconsciousness swooping in across both sides of my vision.
Calm yourself, was the first important step. My lungs were soaked, steeped in the things that belonged only in my stomach, and locked up tight. My air passage was blocked and burning with bile and hydrochloric acid. No, I don't have asthma. I have a drinking problem.
Spoiler
Though, now that I think about it, is that inhaler thing any good? Maybe I'll try a hit sometime, just to see.
This was last Friday, just a few hours after I'd quit my office job of twelve years to take a shot at playing poker for a living out West in Nevada. This will not be my first shot at gambling for a living; although I have only tried something like this once before, many years ago.
Around the turn of the century I quit college most of the way through my senior year and I moved out to Las Vegas for 8 years. My experiences were somewhat of interest: rampant drunkenness, a stolen lab animal, solid card counting, North Korean meth, time spent with Mormons, advantage slot grinding, a cowardly pass on an FBI Most Wanted bounty, facing contempt of court charges, and dressing up as Albus Dumbledore. You can find that in my BBV thread.
[U][url]https://forumserver.twoplustwo.c...[/U][/URL] .
That thread held up pretty well in BBV, which is not nothing.
Starting meditative relaxation can be problematic when you're dying from choking on your own puke. I sat up straight, blind from the black splotches that had slapped away the weak light of the kitchen stove. I dropped my shoulders, relaxed my chest and upper arms, and then, projecting calm with all my might, I tried my throat. I pictured my lungs and throat opening up just a tiny passage, for just a little air to go by--something to get me started. And they did, untethering just the smallest little rivulet of air, and it made the most terrifying sound as it went through. It always does.
Whatever you've heard from actors pretending to gasp after being choked, the reality is worse. At least no one was with me this time. When that's been the case, the other person has invariably freaked the **** out when they've heard my gasping and choking routine, which only adds the burden of myself having to reassure them through nodding and non-frantic gestures, so that they won't call 911, as I hate the idea of calling the cops.
April 13th of this year was 14 months without me having a drink. During that long stretch I had honestly forgotten why I'd quit. That's right, I had completely purged from my recall the years of nighttime memories of myself almost choking to death, this happening once or twice every couple of weeks on average. Now, the terrifying night wakeups didn't happen even once during the 14 dry months. But 3 weeks back into drinking--oh yeah--there was that thing, wasn't there?.
Now, there was something else I'd forgotten about. And that's the Double Tap. The Double Tap happens when I don't force my drunk and tired and traumatized self to remain awake for a good two or three hours after a choking incident. If I fall back asleep before then, I wake up choking to death all over again. And sure enough, that happened last Friday, and I had to save myself again.
So on Saturday I jumped back on the waggy, and Cinco de Mayo is now my new anniversary date, and that's really enough about drinking. I'm not here to write about that business. I should have been done with it; and now I am.
My flight leaves for Reno in a few hours, and I'll be out there for the next 3 weeks scouting out the live poker games in the city. If I like it, that's where I'm moving to.
I want to make it clear that I know nothing about programming video games, so my hypothesis about dynamic interiors and exteriors may be complete bunk.
Have you seen this, Suited? Even though I haven't played live in a while, I've been watching CLP vids lately. This one is quite different from Bart's usual output.
Have you seen this, Suited? Even though I haven't played live in a while, I've been watching CLP vids lately. This one is quite different from Bart's usual output.
I watch most of Bart's stuff. He's great. He plays at Encore in Boston, but he doesn't come out to Springfield. I don't blame him; it's a solid 2 hours from Encore to Springfield and the $2/$5 and $5/$10 games here rarely get more than one table and look reg-infested.
I've avoided this video because I suspect that the answer is "not really." I might be able to make a go of it by supplementing the poker with slot play, if I can get myself to put in enough hours, which I haven't done yet.
I'll let someone else do the math, but I read that excerpt last night. It was 8 pages after I re-started.
So same book. 8 pages away.
Well, we've also sat at adjacent poker tables in Las Vegas without knowing that the other person was there.
It's been at least 5 years since I last read So Long and Thanks for All the Fish, There was something about the possibility of me falsely accusing an old lady of stealing my 80c change ticket that reminded me of the anecdote in that book.
typically would suggest a dna test except 23andme is filing for bankruptcy
I'm pretty confident without any testing. If he has a small penis it's almost a certainty.
I meant big penis, obviously.
I watch most of Bart's stuff. He's great. He plays at Encore in Boston, but he doesn't come out to Springfield. I don't blame him; it's a solid 2 hours from Encore to Springfield and the $2/$5 and $5/$10 games here rarely get more than one table and look reg-infested.
I've avoided this video because I suspect that the answer is "not really." I might be able to make a go of it by supplementing the poker with slot play, if I can get myself to put in enough hours, which I haven't done yet.
Video spoiler alert!
Spoiler
The caller grinds 1/3 and estimates his own VPIP at 30, yet he is somehow winning.
I never got a tattoo or voluntarily gave DNA in case the government ever full 1984.
I'm pretty confident without any testing. If he has a small penis it's almost a certainty.
Grower or shower?
Spoiler
Video spoiler alert!
Spoiler
The caller grinds 1/3 and estimates his own VPIP at 30, yet he is somehow winning.
Good for him! There's some hope. Although a lot of us know people who claim to "always" win at the casino.
Score.
Spoiler
I tipped the attendant $40.
He just came back and gave me a meal comp for $15, so it must have been satisfactory...or he's just really nice.
So how much was the score exactly?
Congrats!
nice!
love the way it hit your only multiplier
Ta da!
nice! and of course it comes on the multiplier 😀
Nice! A well needed (and deserved) score 
Nice.
I have so little left that one very bad poker session will ruin me, so I've been sticking to low-variance slot plays to try to build up the roll. Today I took in $150, but I'll still need a Big Score if I'm going to pull out of this dive.
and here we are one week later
guess all you gotta do is bitch a little
Tyty!
That is the perfect interjection for this spot.
Shows why a single x2 multiplier on 3 or 5 hands is always a play. For 10 hands, a lone x2 is marginal or breakevenish given Ultimate X's miserly pay tables, so I'll skip that play, unless I'm feeling gamblesome that day, which I rarely am, but I will play a x3 or two x2s on 10 hand configurations all day.
But enough numerical analysis: the important thing is that I was wearing my lucky shirt, which is a 90's-looking plaid flannel, which I also wore when I won the $1000 playing poker, and when I won the $500 playing slots. Soon, I will be known around the casino as the guy who always wears that same shirt.
A new month starts soon, and I'll need to do this all over again.
Be Nice to Sweatercunny
Sweatercunny showed up soon after my score, as I knew he would, because I know his schedule pretty well.
If I'm short on time, which I often am because I'm a procrastinator, I'll leave the Ultimate X Bonus Streak for checking for him, because I know that he much prefers Bonus Streak, while I like the vanilla X better, and Sweatercunny frequently leaves the vanilla X alone, or checks it haphazardly.
So today, I spoke up and told him that I'd left the Bonus Streaks for him. At first, he looked at me like I'd said something challenging or insulting to him, as I think that was what he expected to hear from me, as we've often alternated between pointedly ignoring and staring daggers at each other.
Today, I wanted to change that.
So I repeated myself. I told him that I'd left the Bonus Streaks for him. Still surprised, he thanked me and wished me a very nice day, and I wished him the same.
Ty Sheep!
Gamblesome popped into my head, and I thought "That's a good word." So I used it. And somebody liked it. That's the fun of writing.
I just checked the etymology of the word. Someone used it back in 1874, but I'd have to pay the Oxford Dictionary people in order to find out who it was and how they used it.
I checked to see if it was Mark Twain, because I've been reading him a lot lately—I get my love of em dashes and semicolons from him; it's a way of thinking—but nothing came up with gamblesome and Twain.
