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.
Taiwan is an interesting place, but England's claims to reunification with Ireland are much much stronger than China's claims on Formosa.
I did work in Taiwan many years ago. I had a great time. Had interesting sexual encounters with Mongolian whores. Always worth the money.
England is a rathole. Too bad the Germans didn’t completely blow it back to the Middle Ages.
that's funny because mongolian hookers is very much a thing in the mainland as well - now we just need a tr about the presence or lack of mongolina hookers in england and ireland and the circle will be complete
same with russians to the point that any russian female would never tell people she was from russia because if she did the first thing out of the guys mouth would be "oh how much do you charge"
I did meet a couple of Mongolians in HK, and they have a reputation of being good in the bedroom. No hookers though as far as I know. Most hookers in HK are from Philippines, Indonesia, the mainland or African countries. Not that I would know, lol. Also don't really wanna make this political but my impression of Taiwanese and their political stances are quite different from rickroll's. Let's just say we probably agree that the vast majority of mainlanders are strongly in favor of unification, even moderate ones. Propaganda works.
My opinion is probably biased though as I mainly talked to Taiwanese that are visiting HK, and can speak English, so that's not an unbiased sample. I've visited Taiwan a couple times, great place, but it would be better if you can speak Mandarin on a conversational level. Same as Korea, Japan and their languages. Also all cash games illegal. Tourneys allowed.
I've been to Taiwan several times, and I've always come back as an admirer of the Taiwanese people. They are a highly-educated, productive, generous, unselfish and level-headed people.
Many of their antecedents left the mainland 75 years ago with Chiang Kai-shek, who was little better than a corrupt, authoritarian warlord holdover from China's imperial past. And yet, after Chiang, the people transitioned fairly quickly and with little unrest or persecution into a healthy, working democracy, all in the face of the mainland's constant totalitarian threats to their existence.
And they achieved all this with little help or praise or even recognition from the other democracies of the world, who've always been afraid of the inevitable diplomatic and economic backlash from the mainland.
Hell, even today Taiwan has to send their teams to the Olympics under the moniker "Chinese Taipei," an insult to their hard-held freedom and sovereignty. Can you imagine if the Olympic Committee tried to make Ukraine call themselves "Russian Kyiv"?
As much as I admire Helen's people, I have zero romantic interest in her. It doesn't matter why she's fallen for me. It's not going to happen.
Well, sorry to correct here a lil bit, but basically Taiwan was an absolute and devastating totalitarian strongman dictatorship which was little better, arguably worse, than mainland China until the late 80s. After that they transitioned better to a real democracy than pretty much any country in Asia (this is a pointer here and not further discussed how the real power structure is "On the surface democracies" like Korea or Japan) but reportedly, it was with help of western allies, mainly the US, who realized it looked kinda bad that they were openly making the case for freedom and democracy in the world and OTOH backed this totalitarian dictatorship for the single reason of that they were opposed to the communists.
Also the main reason they are called ROC is they claimed all of China, and that was quite vast by their definition, from Wikipedia
the Kuomintang continued to claim sovereignty over 'all of China', which it defined to include mainland China (including Tibet), Taiwan (including Penghu), Outer Mongolia, and other minor territories
I did meet a couple of Mongolians in HK, and they have a reputation of being good in the bedroom. No hookers though as far as I know. Most hookers in HK are from Philippines, Indonesia, the mainland or African countries. Not that I would know, lol. Also don't really wanna make this political but my
yeah my interaction with taiwanese are through the lens of those living on the mainland (there were multiple taiwanese at every company i worked for in beijing) and through visiting taiwan but also through the lens of someone who speaks fluent mandarin and they knew i was living in beijing
i've found chinese to be among the most agreeable people in the world where you can spout extremely right wing stuff on tuesday to them and they'll nod their heads in agreement and then on wednesday you spout contradictory stuff that's extremely left wing and they'll again nod their heads in agreement
it's especially visible when you see them interacting with others when you realize the objectively overweight or unattractive foreigner from a 3rd world country will get the same blanket praise I'd get (almost verbatim) regarding how handsome they were and how amazing their country was etc etc
it was especially annoying whenever we were doing business with a foreign firm because even though my own work had nothing to do with it, i'd usually get looped in on those meetings anyway and they'd see them lie through their teeth about everything
just a huge culture of playing everything close to the vest and at all times appearing kind and flattering
ie i know fully well that they only view this vendor as a stopgap until our own system is up and running only want a 3 month contract with a max budget of 10k per month before they'll move on to do things internally - but then they'll tell the vendor they envision a long term contract and hope to just test the waters momentarily and then if things work out well they'll up the size of the contract tenfold or something silly like that
even worse when it's time to rundown the contract, they don't cancel it, they instead just cease payments, because hey, they may continue to provide those goods and services for another couple months before they realize we're actually not going to pay them again
inevitably they'd reach out to me and ask what was going on and i'd always feel trapped in a difficult situation where i didn't want to get fired but also didn't want them to continue wasting resources on this and to cut their losses so i'd word in a way that would appear to a non-native speaker to be a neutral response but hopefully a non-native speaker would be able to parse what i was really telling them
i'd often get people from the us tell me "oh we're going to start sourcing x from this factory in china" to which my standard response was "that's great but you need to send someone relatively high up the food chain to visit them in person when you sign the contract and also to make a habit of visiting fairly regularly as well because it's essential that you develop a personal relationship with them that is ongoing where you drink and whore together and form the kind of bonds they require to not just decide to casually screw you over at the first opportunity"
Well, sorry to correct here a lil bit, but basically Taiwan was an absolute and devastating totalitarian strongman dictatorship which was little better, arguably worse, than mainland China until the late 80s. After that they transitioned better to a real democracy than pretty much any country in Asi
Death(s) Unknown. A 1992 government report estimated between 18,000 and 28,000[
kmt mainlanders were extremely brutal to the locals upon their arrival
chiang was arguably worse than mao (which is a big reason why popular support in the usa during the civil war was in fact for mao) and his son continued to lead the one party totalitarian state after chiang's death - only after the death of the son did they transition to being a democracy in 1987
the father/son duo executed over 4k political dissidents and imprisoned another 140k and travel to the mainland, hong kong, & macau were forbidden
taiwanese refer to that era as the white terror
to give you an idea of the staggering amount of taiwanese political dissident who were killed, they only had a population of 8 million in 1950 and 18 million in 1987
let's say an average of 15 million
that's 0.03% of the country executed for political reasons - that doesn't feel like a lot but the united states is 0.07% convicted felons
furthermore, nearly 1% of the population was in jail for political reasons
so basically everyone would have known someone either directly or indirectly who was in jail for dissidence and quite a few would also know someone who was executed for that crime as well
mainland china had a lot of terrible things happen in their early history as well but taiwan was no picnic
Chiang was bad news. I mentioned that. But, as you folks pointed out, I also glossed over the people's subsequent struggles to throw off his legacy. That doesn't make their success any less remarkable.
Let's not give the US too much credit for fostering a democracy in Taiwan. We've had a lot more failures on that front than successes. A country only throws off its authoritarian yolk when its people are prepared to sacrifice themselves for that cause, and that sacrifice is only a necessary component for democracy, not a sufficient one. They still have to best and get rid of the bad guys, and then resist the insidious momentum to become the bad guys once they get hold of the power.
to give you an idea of the staggering amount of taiwanese political dissident who were killed, they only had a population of 8 million in 1950 and 18 million in 1987
let's say an average of 15 million
that's 0.03% of the country executed for political reasons - that doesn't feel like a lot but the uni
Yeah, but this was done by the Chinese who invaded in 1947. An obvious reason to keep it from happening again.
Let's not give the US too much credit for fostering a democracy in Taiwan. We've had a lot more failures on that front than successes. A country only throws off its authoritarian yolk when its people are prepared to sacrifice themselves for that cause, and that sacrifice is only a necessary componen
That's a fair point. But it would lead to the bigger question whether there are really people/nations/ethnicities who are better in fostering democracies than others. I would argue that it's mostly random, and has a lot to do with individuals who emerge as leaders and what kind of ideas they have. It also has to do with economics and other areas. Taiwan/China would be a good example here as you have two countries of largely the same ethnicity and cultural background that went a completely different path. I am ignoring ethnic minorities here but you have them both in Taiwan and the mainland.
Taiwan/China would be a good example here as you have two countries of largely the same ethnicity and cultural background
I'm fairly sure this is where we disagree, but don't know how to resolve the issue.
Well according to wiki 95-97% of Taiwanese are Han Chinese whereas 91% of Mainlanders are Han Chinese which is generally recognized as one ethnicity and necessarily also similar background which of course diverged mainly after the civil war as discussed in this but Chinese culture reaches back much further and ofc there are a lot of similarities between Taiwanese and mainland Chinese, language, holidays and the stories behind them, food traditions etc. I mean their biggest holiday is the Chinese new year so there's that.
More poker, less (geo)politics.
Por favor.
Yesss, that I agree!
The Chinese have always seen themselves as the most important and influential people on the planet.
Of course the French think they are but in reality they are far down the list with a shorter timeline. And their food is outrageously silly to boot.
I think the Helen Part II business is being more than a little overhyped, but I will get to it, soon. Just don't expect an epic. It's merely the second half of a bad date.
This morning, in the wee hours, I decided to make a slot run to break out of my funk. I arrived at MGM around 6 AM to find that someone had checked all of the machines just before I got there.
It was nice of this person to leave them in a state where it was immediately obvious to a slot grinder that they'd just been checked. There are ways to cover ones tracks on the machines in order to make the next grinder waste their time fruitlessly checking them, and that person did not do that, so kudos to them.
I wasn't going to wait around 4 hours for the poker room to open, so I drove home, empty-handed.
Here I watched The Apartment from 1960, with Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine and Fred MacMurray, directed by Billy Wilder.
Excellent flick.
I believe that one of you kind readers is a big Shirley Mac fan. She was absolutely adorable in this, while also acting at a masterclass level.
While I was watching, Helen poured our her heart to me in a text missive that could be described as epic. I have been curt with her in my text replies. It would be more cruel to dangle hope where there is none, so my reply this time was...
Hi Helen,
That's a very kind message. A dating app (which she mentioned as an option for her) may be good. I don't know for sure. I really have no interest in having a girlfriend, and I don't see that changing at any time.
You deserve love in this world. I'm sorry that you haven't received it yet.
Taiwan/China would be a good example here as you have two countries of largely the same ethnicity and cultural background that went a completely different path. I am ignoring ethnic minorities here but you have them both in Taiwan and the mainland.
It was impressive to see Taiwan, Japan and South Korea break a 2000+ year cycle of warlords and autocrats. Certain people will hold that it was the US occupation with MacArthur as viceroy that brought democracy to Japan, but we had similar plans for "South Vietnam", Iraq and Afghanistan, and when those plans went awry we switched over to making rubble bounce repeatedly from missiles and giant bombs dropped by planes so high up in the air that they couldn't be seen from the ground.
Secret suited and Helen footage 😉
Spoiler
That Amy Belle is something. I had to look in the comments to find her name because she's not given any credit in description; it's just Rod Stewart's name and his various social media IPs 17 times over.
Edit: never mind, he says her name at the end.
I don't know if I have ever mentioned it on this forum, but Shirley MacLaine is the stone cold nuts.
That Amy Belle is something. I had to look in the comments to find her name because she's not given any credit in description; it's just Rod Stewart's name and his various social media IPs 17 times over.
Edit: never mind, he says her name at the end.
Tbf she's given credit, it could be more prominent though
Spoiler
Also, she's a one-hit wonder, she's mainly known for this very performance that I linked to. She released some other stuff but none was particularly successful. A few years later she was reportedly back to singing in pubs and other small venues. IIRC she married some (presumably rich) music producer though, so she's probably doing fine.
The Dry 2024 Challenge Update
January: ✓
February: ✓
March: ✓
April: ✓
May: ✓
June: ✓
July: ✓
August: ✓
September: ✓
October: UNLOCKED
As I've mentioned in previous posts, I only have one "security guard" to help me with my habit-breaking projects, so when I take on a new challenge, I need to see to it that the old (but still active) challenge has been locked down for a while and doesn't need 24/7 security on it.
Last month I did three good weeks on the new challenge, which is to work 40 hours a week at the casino, playing poker and checking slots, but then I hit a runbad streak and I fell apart on that endeavor.
I remain sober; that being the old (but still active) challenge.
For a short time last month, this was touch and go. On my way to work, I drive by a large, well-stocked, well-run and very reasonably-priced liquor store. I was a reg at that store before this year, but the recent months of driving on past it had inured me to resisting its charms, to the point where I no longer gave the place any more attention than the discount tire store next to it.
That changed when I was using all of my BSGE (big security guard energy) on fighting to get to work and stay at work in the midst of the worst poker downturn I've ever faced. It was then that the dual demons manifested on both of my shoulders and started trading off whispers in my ears.
Who will know? Who will know if you stop at the store and buy something? Nobody. No one's watching you. You're a grownup. Been one for a very long time. You can buy grownup stuff and consume it quietly and responsibly at home. You don't have to report everything that happens to you in your stupid blog. Who will know?
I will know, goddamn it. I will know. And that's everything. That's the be-all and the end-all, the alpha and the omega.
So I pulled back on the new project, and I put my guy back on the old one. Had him spend some time poking around and checking locks and shining his flashlight in dark places and whatnot.
I can say from that that everything's currently sound on the no-drinking project. On Thursday, I'll hit the casino and fire up the new project again.
Tomorrow, I'll finish the Helen day trip recounting.
gone on far too long for backsliding now
certain ruts become reworn after oxbows reform river grains between your toes
you need to heal up yet not step forward into the quicksand
