Demon Possession

One definition of insanity is repeating the same act over and over expecting a different result. I don't really like that definition because many things can be repeated over and over with varying degrees of success: shooting baskets, bluffs in cards, hitting on girls, etc.. This definition almost equates a lack of sanity with just being stubborn. In some ways I suppose, stubbornness is a mental disorder. Perhaps my infatuation with midget clowns being anally raped by coked-up Russian wolfhounds is as well. But that is beside the point. The point is that Jeff Francoeur is doing a great job and has earned a starting position in right field for the first place Atlanta Braves. Go Braves!! (p.s. please don't blow it in the playoffs again)

bonkers

The bonkers candy gushed juices that weren't really fruit but sugary concoctions of the faceless, nameless multinational conglomerate who's only purpose in this world is to amass as much land and green and off-white and especially pink printed pieces of paper as it can to gather up the boardwalks and the park places, and all the hotels but from my vantage place of oriental I can see their plan and one day the single apartments on baltic and mediterranean will erupt with the masses of tophats and irons and boots who don't have what the bonkers producers have but want it worse and will take it by cracking their 40 oz bottles on heads and then I will hop on the reading and take it all the way to aruba where I will drink mai-tai's and play cards and rape and murder young tourists and feed them to sharks because under dutch law no body=no crime and even if caught I will defend myself and win and then go visit ted bundy and laugh and laugh at how he sucks and I rule and then I will buy some candy.

Is anybody paying attention?

"I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachment of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations."- James Madison

Wasn't this supposed to have a sunset provision where it ended after a few years?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050722/ap_on_go_co/patriot_act

"In accordance with the principles of double-think it does not matter if the war is not real. For when it is, victory is not possible. The war is not meant to be won, but it is meant to be continuous.”- George Orwell

The strategy used to condition society is war. Gee, I wonder why they held the vote on extending the Patriot Act the day after the attacks on London.

"Why wouldn't anyone want to say the Pledge of Allegiance, unless they detested their own country or were ignorant of its greatness?"- Sean Hannity

"The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them."- George Orwell

Yin and Yang

In the current state of the world, the aggression and ruthless competitive nature that marks man's brain type is no longer productive in political affairs. Women world leaders could better reach out to warring factions, open communication lines, and perhaps create a truly global community where the atrocities committed by the hands of man would lessen. Petty bickering and silly disputes (such as religion) could be squashed or at least compromised on.

Q: What do you tell a woman with two black eyes?

A: Nothing, she's already been told twice.


Africa, although currently a cesspool of disease, starvation and brutal corruption, has the potential to become whatever it wants to be. While it has historically been the European community's whipping boy in every conceivable way, if we stick by the G8 summit's decision to step up aid and truly decide to crack down on the corrupt governments that infest the continent, perhaps Africa can once again rise and reach the heights it hasn't seen in centuries.

Q: What do you say to a black Jew?

A: Get to the back of the oven.

Actual Courtroom Examinations

These are all actual exchanges that occurred in court......

ATTORNEY: Are you sexually active?
WITNESS: No, I just lie there.

ATTORNEY: This myasthenia gravis, does it affect your memory at all?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: And in what ways does it affect your memory?
WITNESS: I forget.
ATTORNEY: You forget? Can you give us an example of something you forgot?

ATTORNEY: Now doctor, isn't it true that when a person dies in his sleep, he doesn't know about it until the next morning?
WITNESS: Did you actually pass the bar exam?

ATTORNEY: The youngest son, the twenty-year-old, how old is he?
WITNESS: Uh, he's twenty-one..

ATTORNEY: Were you present when your picture was taken?
WITNESS: Would you repeat the question?

ATTORNEY: So the date of conception (of the baby) was August 8th?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: And what were you doing at that time?
WITNESS: Uh....

ATTORNEY: How was your first marriage terminated?
WITNESS: By death.
ATTORNEY: And by whose death was it terminated?

ATTORNEY: Can you describe the individual?
WITNESS: He was about medium height and had a beard.
ATTORNEY: Was this a male or a female?

ATTORNEY: Doctor, how many of your autopsies have you performed on dead people?
WITNESS: All my autopsies are performed on dead people.

ATTORNEY: ALL your responses MUST be oral, OK? What school did you go to?
WITNESS: Oral

ATTORNEY: Do you recall the time that you examined the body?
WITNESS: The autopsy started around 8:30 p.m.
ATTORNEY: And Mr. Denton was dead at the time?
WITNESS: No, he was sitting on the table wondering why I was doing an autopsy on him!

ATTORNEY: Are you qualified to give a urine sample?
WITNESS: Huh?

ATTORNEY: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: Did you check for blood pressure?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: Did you check for breathing?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: How can you be so sure, Doctor?
WITNESS: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.
ATTORNEY: But could the patient have still been alive, nevertheless?
WITNESS: Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law.

I ain't sayin I beat the devil, but I drank his beer for nothin... and then I stole his song

Totally in control, I lashed out with a violent whipping motion. It felt good.
I watched as the ball buzzed over the net, then quickly dipped as the topspin kicked in.
I posed for a moment, thinking that this must be a clean winner.. then my attention shifted to my opponent.
Although he had been on the other side of the court when the shot was struck, he was now almost to the ball. He moved with unnerving speed, much faster than I had ever seen him move before. While it was a hot day, the air shimmered as he approached the ball, deftly flicking it down the line.
Fuck
I ran as fast as he could towards the ball, preparing for my patented two-hander crosscourt. I began to recoil for the shot, but then I caught a glimpse of my opponent out of the corner of my eye.
He was waiting for it.
I knew that if I hit my crosscourt shot, it would be returned for a volley winner. I knew it as surely as I know my own name.
I abandoned my plan and let instinct take over.
I ripped a one-hander down the line.
It was perfect. Federer, Korda, Sampras. None could have hit a shot any better than this.
The laser shot smacked the sideline and went against the back fence with a loud clang before ricocheting into the corner of the court.
My opponent looked over to the sideline in disbelief before returning his gaze to me.
"Out" he said.

It was a beautiful, sunny day here at Emory University's tennis courts. To their right was a boy and a girl hitting balls. The girl looked Indian and had some nice tits. She had nice form but was pretty slow. Her opponent was a fat, sloppy guy with a beard who had terrible form but would occasionally rip a nice winner. Other college kids were wandered around, going on their merry little ways, many chatting on cell phones about who they had/wanted to/ were going to fuck, and where they would/wanted to get fucked up today.

But that was all in the background now, I could feel anger boil as I looked at this liar in front of me.
"What the fuck are you talking about, that shit was clearly in!" I announced very loudly.
"And that was set point, I won, you owe me $50".
"No," he said, "I call it out, the score is now deuce."
I began walking up to the net, feeling the anger rising and thinking about pummeling this piece of shit with my fists. "Pay me my $50 or I'm GOING TO TAKE IT FROM YOU." I said very loudly. I didn't even notice that everyone around us had stopped playing and was just watching us.

He merely regarded me, a smirk crossing his lips. "And just how would you do that?", he said softly, an undercurrent of amusement in his voice.
"Dude, don't think you....." my voice trailed off as I finally began to see what was going on around us. The air was thickening, becoming hazy. That isn't right though. I can't really describe in words what was happening. Things were just.... dissolving. It was like I ate a sheet of acid at once although my mind was completely clear.

I looked at the two who had been hitting next to us. They were standing and looking at us. The Indian girl's face lengthened to an impossible reptilian mask. Her forked tongue clearly protruded from her fangs?!? The fat one was turning into a gelatinous mass. His eyes were still visible in between the slimy rolls.

I began whirling around, watching with sheer terror as the foundation of my sanity unraveled in front of me, the people who had been milling around earlier had all changed, some had grown opaque wings thick with membranes and were now hovering in the air, others had sprouted additional limbs and scurried on the ground like insects.

I looked back at my opponent who I had once considered a friend. He looked the same as before, but I could tell that there was something behind him, almost as if his entire being was but a costume covering something much larger inside. "What do you want!?!", I screamed, the fear changing my baritone into a hysterical soprano, "WHAT DO YOU WANT!!?".

He merely looked at me, his head tilted quizzically to the side, the smirk still plastered on his face. I could hear the demons closing in on me, I could feel their presence drawing closer, it was not unlike the smell of hot trash, something so vile and unclean that a mere whiff of it could cause you to vomit everything you had inside of you, leaving you dry-heaving on the ground.

Suddenly it hits me, "alright", I yelled, "good call, the shot was out."

As soon as I exclaimed this, all things returned to normal. The birds were chirping and the Sun returned.

He tossed me a second ball. He looked at me and made a squeezing gesture with his thumb and index finger. "It was this close," he said before walking back to the baseline.

I made a mental note to find a new hitting partner for next time.

Inferno

"I will show you fear in a handful of dust." - T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land

Their smiles did not cool the fire of his rage, the toothy grins bore it across the dry bush and kindling of the city. Mere smiles, perhaps with innocent intentions, perhaps intending to incite, but having no concept of his depth in the sea of despair. Whatever the case, it is but a footnote. The results are the meat of the story. Charred flesh to be torn apart as what little blood still coagulates dribbles down your chin, gentile reader. For if a butterfly's wing can start a tsunami half a world away, what then can be the power of a smile, here, amongst the concrete jungle of graft and greed we all inhabit. Could it start an all-consuming inferno? The answer lies in your heart, and mine.

Weird

There are under 90 players remaining at the WSOP, this is less than 2% of the number that began. Of these 90, all three of the players I mentioned in my WSOP dream, Matusow, Juanda, and Ivey are still remaining. To me, that is pretty damn insane considering I have only heard of three of the other remaining players before. Raymer has taken a big hit and is below the average stack, but Matusow is #2 with 3.3 million and Ivey is #5 with 2.2 million. I can't wait till they show this shit on t.v.

My Nightmare

I don’t remember my dreams that often, but I had a nightmare last night that was pretty fucking crazy and caused me to wake up in the middle of the night with a full recollection of it. It began simply enough, with myself and some friends going to some party that was in the downtown area (was kind of hazy as to what exactly we were going to), but at any rate, there was a few fairly young guys standing around wearing police uniforms. I needed to cross the street, so I walked across and a white officer told me that I was jaywalking and had to come and get a ticket from his car. I argued with him for a minute, but eventually began walking with him after he started threatening me with resisting. He led me down the street, and then began going a strange route over some fences and over into a ghetto area. It is around this time that I began to suspect that these guys weren’t cops at all. He led me to an area where there were a bunch of shady black dudes around, some of them wearing police type uniforms but it was clear that these weren’t cops.
Then the white cop who had led me here turned and walked off into another direction, not saying anything. It was apparent to me now that he had just been trying to lead me here. One guy in particular was stepping up to me aggressively and clearly was about to attack me. I went back up to a fence that was nearby and was trying to climb over it when the guy pulled out a little object that looked like a gun of some sort. He then ran up from behind and “shot” me in the back with it. The funny thing was that it didn’t hurt at all. I scaled the fence and started to run away, but this guy pursued me and kept shooting me with his little gun thing.
At some point I realized that it wasn’t so much like being shot as it was like being injected. Eventually I got away from him and ran up to an area outside a dormitory where an asian guy and a bunch of other guys were smoking from some sort of pipe device. I then somehow knew that the original guy who had been shooting me was actually injecting me with this same drug that these guys were smoking. I said something to the asian guy and he began ranting about the drug (which had no real name but I somehow knew that it was the most addictive drug ever created), and that everyone was doing it now and then they all attacked me and kept firing up their pipes right up on me to try to get me high from their drug.
So I ran, but the whole world was full of people trying to light up this shit right up on me or shoot me with these little gun things that injected me with the drug and I couldn’t get away. Then I finally woke up and realized that this was some fucked up shit and my brain was trying to tell me something. Usually when I have nightmares it involves me having killed someone and I just keep thinking that my life is over as I knew it because I will be going to jail. I’m pretty sure I know what the deal is with those dreams: stop doing dumb shit or your life will be over. As for this one, my interpretation is pretty much the same. I know the dream seems pretty silly as I described it but as I was dreaming it there wasn’t much funny about it.

On another note, Greg Raymer is currently the chip leader at the WSOP main event with only 160+ players remaining out of the original 6600. Phil Ivey is also in the top 10. That is pretty damn amazing.

My Dream

Scene: Final Table 2006 WSOP Main Event

Norman Chad: "Well this has been an exhibition in unorthodox poker from cantseefade so far. He has built a huge chip lead after calling Phil Ivey's all-in bet without even looking at his cards. In fact, he didn't even watch the flop as he was too busy downing Irish Car bombs with Shana Hiatt and other friends in the audience."

Other dude: "I have never seen anything like this. The rest of the table is stunned and the crowd is going absolutely crazy."

Cantseefade: "Hey hoes, anybody raise me for the rest of the tourney and I'm gonna break you, you hear what I said Juanda and Matusow?"

Other fish at table: "mumble mumble"

Cantseefade "Don't make me raise up on you bitches, we can play cards like gentlemen or we can get into some gangsta type shit."

Here is a very interesting story by an otherwise worthless writer.

Adventures in Hyrule

So I was soulstorming in the street the other day when I fell into an open manhole and that's where I met Splinter who was just a big rat but he knew how to fight and bite, he called it karazy and then he would wrap himself in a big towel like he was tired and be about to leave the stage but then he would throw it off when the band played and come back and drop some of those funky-fresh moves and the crowd would go wild and he would say he feel's good and elude the police but get arrested and serve his time and play music with the cop who arrested him and hire the D.A. who convicted him, and then I said you're not Splinter, you're James Brown and he looked at me real hard and said "shhhhh.. it's a secret to everyone", and then I bought the blue candle for 60 rubies and stabbed him and ran off before the fireballs could hit me.

Regicide

Once there was a king who lived inside his own head.
His cries and fists couldn't free himself from his bony prison.
He died there.
Trapped.
The rotting flesh poisoned his head and drove him mad.
One death led to two.
Or did it?

My evening/early morning

1. Was up 14 points on the field at trivia with one question left where you can wager up to 15 points.
2. Came in 2nd at trivia.
3. Choked at Golden Tee golf.
4. Ran into a friend I hadn't seen in a while.
5. Spilled my beer all over a table.
6. Drank a free shot in a bar with no power.
7. Drunk dialed a beautiful girl I met this weekend at 2:48 A:M.
8. Went to sleep.*


* denotes don't remember doing

Writing crap beats working

The G8 conference will play out thusly: Blair's African relief plan will be accepted, Bush will refuse any concessions on Greenhouse gas emissions and will make hollow promises about alternative technologies. The U.S will renege on our promise to double African aid and will instead spend trillions on building more weapons. The world will question us about Iraq and we will blow them off. Protests will occur the entire time. The summit will end with everyone claiming it was a moderate success. AIDS and malaria in Africa will continue to mount.

Rehnquist will die/resign before Bush leaves office. Alberto Gonzalez will be nominated for the Supreme Court along with an even more morally conservative Justice. Scalia will become Chief Justice. Roe will stand but the Court will become more divisive than ever before and civil liberties will be severely limited.

One time I got so far in Ms. Pac Man that the ghosts didn't turn blue at all when you ate the power dots, instead it triggered them to all come directly at you. I got about 10 levels farther after that.

Things I like:
1. Topspin lobs
2. Large, firm breasts,
3. Honeydew melon

Things I don't like:
1. Loud people with New York/New Jersey/ Boston accents
2. Cigar smoke
3. Slugs

The same words have been spoken.
Every action mimicked before.
The cycle is never broken.
So our potential never rises above the floor.

FREE LITTLE KIM!!!!

Ode to Natalie

“Do I contradict myself? Very well, I contradict myself. I am large; I contain multitudes.” – Walt Whitman

The steady torrent couldn’t wash the heat off the air. Even protected by the screened-in porch from the direct path of the rain, its essence still flooded her, drenching her skin with its sluggish, wet heat. The plants and trees twitched and shuddered from a million locales as the water relentlessly beat upon them. She rose from her chair, opened the screen door, and walked under the rain. It was almost like being in a huge, warm shower. Xhibit could blow up her ride and Ashton Kutcher could grind her family into chili, and the room raiders could steal her shit and leave and she wouldn’t care.

She needed no shelter from the storm. Nothing could harm her.

So she walked off into the yard. Later that night they looked for her, the search went on for weeks, far after the rain had ceased. But she was gone. She had achieved her goal.

She was the storm.

Movie Review: Over The Top

Over the weekend, one of my personal favorite movies of all time was shown several times on some of the various HBO channels. This film is highly underrated and clearly belongs on the list of top #100 films of all-time. You have the heartwarming story of an arm-wrestling truck driver named Lincoln Hawk who is asked by his terminally-ill ex-wife to pick up his son from Military Academy and drive cross country to visit her in the hospital. The main antagonist, her father, hates Hawk and wants him to have nothing to do with the boy.

The reason why Hawk left his wealthy wife and abandoned his son are unclear, but Hawk admits that leaving”…was a mistake, I admit that.” He later makes references to how her father was “tearing us apart,” but like so many other great films, it is what it doesn’t tell you that leaves you wanting more.

As they drive to meet their gravely ill loved one, Hawk and son have spats, but soon bond as Hawk bets money on his son beating a mullet wearing kid at arm-wrestling at a diner and allows him to drive his huge rig on the road. The good times end however, when they arrive at the hospital to find that she has already died.

The child is then abducted by his grandfather, and an enraged Hawk drives his rig straight through an iron gate and into the mansion where the boy was being kept. After his subsequent arrest, Hawk is offered a one-time only deal: sign custody over to gramps and leave town and all charges will be dropped. Hawk has no choice but to agree, and then does what any sane man would do: drives to Vegas, sells his truck for $7,000 and bets it all on himself at 20:1 odds on winning the World Championship of Arm Wrestling.

There at the Championships, Hawk meets the Four-Time defending champion Paul Hurley who has not lost in Five years and whose arms look like massive tree trunks. Undeterred, Hawk wins several matches in the double-elimination format before finally losing to a competitor named John Grizzly who drank motor oil, ate a lit cigar, and was wearing a camo t-shirt with the word “FUBAR” on it, which off course is the abbreviation for “Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition.” Such subtle wordplay is part of what makes this movie such a true classic. That and moments like when the black competitor who was representing the Teamsters lost to Hawk in one second and then cried about how he was being cheated and tried to fight Hawk. Great stuff.

Although all of these scenes were great enough on their own, my personal favorite parts were the candid interviews they spliced in with the competitors as the event went on. Most of the competitors were surprisingly articulate, including Hurley who described how what he likes to do is drive trucks and break arms, “its what I like to do, its what I do best.” Hawk likened himself to a “machine… a truck,” when he turned his hat backwards and began a match.

In the climactic showdown between Hawk and Hurley, the dimunitive Hawk improbably defeated the Goliath-like Hurley, thus adding to the legend of the film with a shrouded Biblical reference. Like King David before him, Hawk ruled his kingdom from then on with his son at his side, only Hawk’s kingdom is that of greasy drivers, open roads, and meth-addled rednecks who like to arm-wrestle.