Today's featured shit

Hey, Chef.

Domino’s put a circular in my junk mail today. Buy a pizza and get free brownies. Strange enough if it were left at that, but it gets better. The trademarked name of these brownies is “Fudgems.” If you remember the Chocolate Salty Balls episode of South Park, you will remember that Fudgems was a snack that Chef invented.

My favorite was I Just Went and Fudged Your Mama brand snacks.

Goddamn scientology. If it weren’t for them bastard assholes, Chef would still be making salisbury steak for us all.

As Episode 22 will tell you, I played cards last night. I was in a 2-4 game because my friend’s wife is (and has, I suppose) a pussy. I had 10-6 of clubs on the button and there were four limpers so I figured what the hell. The small blind raises, but everyone stays in. Now the post has 14 small bets in it.

The flop had Jc and Qc, but they were both overcards, which is huge, because it makes it more likely that I have the best flush draw. If you hit a second-best flush with two suited hole cards and three on the boards, there is only a 6 percent chance that someone else has the nut flush. Well, I had the third-best flush draw, so I felt pretty good about it.

The small blind bets, and three people call. I decide to raise to buy a free card and build a pot. Well the idiot small blind three-bets it, so two people get out before it gets back to me. I just call. I know there aren’t going to be any free cards in this hand!

The turn is a 10. The small blind bets and we both call. The river is an offsuit 6, giving me a well-disguised two pair. The small blind bets again, the other guy folds.

This is why it is so important to read the board. What hands beat me? A straight? Well, if he had AK, KT or T9, he would not have three bet the flop. Trips? He’s not going to three bet the flop because he is not scared. When you three bet the flop it is because you are trying to scare people out of the hand so they do not draw out on you. Yes QcJcXx on the flop shows a straight draw, but if you have trips, you’re similarly likely to hit a full house or quads when the board pairs. You aren’t worried about a straight or flush hitting, and you know a reraise is not going to drive out those drawing hands anyway, especially at a 2-4 table.

What if he has a better two pair? QJ would normally not be raised out of the small blind, but it is possible in a 2-4 game. I would have expected a check raise on the flop with this hand, however. Remember, seven people were in. Someone will bet, and if you’re in the small blind, you know someone will bet, even though you raised out of position preflop.

What if he has a big pocket pair? Bingo. Of course he would raise preflop with aces or kings, and of course he would jam the pot on the flop and attempt to on the turn. This board just made his hand worse and worse as more cards were dealt. Well, there is no shame in rivering someone because when you lose the hand, you lose the hand.

So where were we? Yes, he bet on the river and the other guy folded. With all this in mind, I clearly had to raise. He called, I showed my motley two pair, and he threw his aces face up in the muck. This was the hand that made my session a winner. We had been joking all night about how I would play any hand in the small blind for a dollar, but after that hand, he did not speak to me again.

When I win the lottery, I am going to travel the Bay Area and review burritos. It’ll be totally indexed, so you’ll be able to click on a city and a neighborhood. It will then have reviews of all the burritos I’ve eaten. What a way to live!

She is in the TV cabinet, so of course you can’t see her because it is so dark, but if you stand in front of the TV and listen, after a few seconds she will meow. The TV is meowing!

So there was a recent AOL scandal in which a bunch of search strings were released, causing lots of personal information out there. I think the issue is that our attitude about the Internet makes no sense. Where do people feel justified in saying that their use of something public, such as the Internet, should be kept confidential? You’re using someone else’s site, so where do you get off in thinking that you can tell them what to do with their record of your activity?

You can only imagine what he’d do to the old movies.

Can you imagine how successful an e-mail representing the government, saying that “your son has been killed in combat in Iraq, but because of a law passed by Congress, you are eligible for restitution. Click here for more information and an application” would be? Man, in an era in which we kick people when they’re down, this would be foolproof.

My biggest weakness in life is that I can’t force myself not to care about something. If it’s an interpersonal relationship, I have to fire the person because I cannot be around them and watch them do stupid shit. If it’s a job-related rule, whether related to personal conduct or the way that something is done, it has to be black and white with me, and it has to always be done that way. Otherwise I just go insane.

I am working on something that has already been edited by someone else, but for various reasons it is going through the system again. The document is rife with the first person. What I mean is that the words “I” and “my” are all over the place. The company I work for does not use the first person as a matter of practice.

It doesn’t matter to me whether the first person is used. I use it all the time. See? I just did. And I just did again! And I just did again! At any rate, because the company says no first person in written research, that’s the credo I follow when I am editing stuff for that company. So when I see something that was done by another editor and it has these types of elementary oversights in it, I get livid. The whole point of having a rule about something is to follow it, is it not?

There’s plenty of stuff out there that has gray areas, and that’s fine. But if you’re going to take the trouble to polarize something, don’t let it be something ceremonial. To keep with the subtle analogy, yes, maybe I am about to start World War III at work. We’ll see.

I just sold something on eBay to someone with the last name Shovel. As if that weren’t good enough on its own, she lives in Flower Mound, Texas!

So it seems that I have found the hole in Israel’s logic, but I need someone to clarify a few things for me first.

Okay, so the reason we have Israel is because the Jews say that they are from there and that it is their rightful place to be? Now wait a minute. We can generally tell where someone’s ancestors are from during the past few thousand years by the color of their skin. This has to do with the sun and the weather and stuff like that.

So if the Jews are saying that they belong there because their forefathers lived there, then why are they the only people within 1000 miles of there that are white? It seems to me that if Israelis really belonged there, they would be just as tan as the rest of the locals.

In reality, then, Israel is no different than the United States. It’s just another colony founded by rejected Europeans. No wonder the two nations seem so intertwined.

Anyway, the logic works, so that must mean my given facts must be wrong. Someone should correct me.