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Another CD just turned up in the mail.

William "Captain Kirk" Shatner's "Has Been".

Why I hear you cry???

Well... Henry Rollins tells a story about it on one of his spoken word CD's. He's on one of the tracks. All the excuse I need. Which means either:

a) I am a sad pathetic Henry Rollins nerd or completist or
b) I am a sad and pathetic music nerd in general :-)

In the album's defense, it was produced by Ben Folds, and was widely acclaimed when it came out in 2004. Lots of other famous people on it - Aimee Mann, for example.

What's that I hear you say? How does a serious noise/metal/obnoxious music fan like me even know who Aimee Mann is??? Blame the film "Magnolia" :-)

In other news, I have a bouncy girlfriend called evildoom_bunny.

Poker Face

Last night, I played Poker - serious poker.

I have played poker in the past, but not for a long, long time. In fact I invented a game called "Rent Money Poker". The rules are simple: back in the day when you paid rent in cash, you and your housemate(s) would divide the pile of rent money into equal sized piles. Then we'd play poker with it. "I'll see your $50 and I raise you $50 of the collective rent money" etc. Then, after the game, gather all the money and go pay the rent. In fact, once upon a time I even played for marbles with my then housemate Jon.

The version we played back in the day went a bit like this:
1) Everyone puts a small amount of money into the "pot" thing
2) Deal five cards to each player
3) Each player has the chance to swap some or all of their cards
4) Each player then took turns betting or holding or folding (or something...)
5) Winner takes the pot...

Simplish - the hard part is working out which hand beats which other hand. There are a number of hands - and I'm so out of my depth, I literally went to the Wikipedia and looked up Poker. There's obvious hands, like pairs, three of a kind, two pair. Then there are weird things like flush, straights, straight flushes etc. etc! Still trying to get my head around them.

Anyway, last night a mate o' mine called Shaun was having his bucks do. And we went to crown casino to an actual poker table to play actual poker with an actual dealer...

Those of you who know me well, will know I harbour a deep hatred of the Casino. I've literally set foot in it all of five times - and once I helped blockade it with 10,000 other people during the S11 protests in 2000, when the WEF was meeting there. And I can (and now will) list all the other times I've been there:

1) A drunken evening with some friends in about 1998, back when I used to drink
2) Seeing Michael Franti at the Mercury Lounge
3) Seeing "Chicken Run", of all things, at the cinema there
4) This year, visiting a trade fair there related to my current job
5) (I think) I met a friend there very, very late one night, although we may well have not actually set foot inside the building

So in other words, this was the first time I was in there for its intended purpose. And damn, it is still hideous, like a long shopping mall with a gambling house attached - full of sad looking, and often old folks who would surely have been happier somewhere else with a friend and nice cup of tea.

I digress.

So, we played some variation of poker, which I believe was called Texas Hold'em. Go to google and type that in and see how many millions of hits you get!!!

The game play goes something like this (I think, I never did quite get the hang of it):

1) One person is given the dealers token (although the actual dealer was always a dude from the casino)
2) The person next to the dealer put up half the ante(?) amount
3) The person next to them put up the full ante amount
4) The dealer deals two - only two - cards to all players
5) Starting with the guy next to the dealer, each player decides if they're in or what fold
6) (I think) at this point, the first person can decide to bet or just "hold"
7) And then... Ah, fuck, I have no idea, betting continues... Read more on the Wiki

The main variation is that you make a hand with the cards you have and any three other cards from a set of "community" cards laid face up on the table. The hard part was the initial round of betting was based just on the two cards one has in one hands, before the other cards are put on the table.

The first thing I noticed was that the hands outlined as being of higher value than other hands - the flushes, royal flushes etc. - very very rarely came into the picture. They were so rarely dealt that often one ended up betting on a pair of cards or at most two pair. In fact, I was beaten in one hand, where I was bluffing like nothing on earth, by a pair of threes. Several of us - being nerds - noted that the high value hands were all sorted exactly in probability order. In other words, the Royal Flush was the least likely combination, and hence the highest value.

Anyway, I tried to remember the value hands, but also remembered something I read once about poker. It's not a card game - it's a form of gambling, where the winner is the one who is a better bluffer than the other players. It turns out that I'm quite good at this. I stuck to some simple rules: fold early when you have low-value, non-sequence cards. Otherwise, at least wait till the face up cards have been dealt. Then relax - take calculated risks, but never act like you are.

This worked a treat for me, I won about five hands, and was the fourth-last player (of the twenty who started) left in the mini-tournament we played. Interesting. Several people accused me of being a shark, since I'd been protesting my ignorance all night. Which might actually have worked in my favour. And it's still true, my one gift is having a halfway decent poker face :-)

I might download a version see if I can't get the hang of it... :-)

Oh, one final observation. One of Shaun's friends, a guy called Sam, was hopeless at concealing his thinking. He'd be twitching, playing with his glasses, rubbing his face. It was hilarious to watch!

Instant Messaging is Soooo 2004

Don't ask me why, but I've ended up occasionally chatting online to the thirteen year old daughter of a friend of mine. Not a whole lot, we (strangely) have nothing in common.

What amused me was the display name she's using. I've seen the likes of it before. Strings of characters which look for all the world like line noise. Tildas (~) etc. etc. However, this one was impressive, stretching over several lines on my display (slightly edited to make her less identifiable):

____ s k y™ // ~ i always knew i knew || i hate nz withh love * t b f L;; - --:

(Hmmmm, live journal has clipped some of the spaces from it, it's a lot longer in MSN.)

I feel quite inadequate by comparison. My display name is "Maxcelcat - Salariman". I'm just not trying, I'm just an online old fuddy duddy. What do you recon, ok_i_give_in?

I also wonder how one comes up with this kind of thing. Does it evolve, just getting longer and longer? Is it static? Is someone somewhere making a sociological study of the phenomenon? And if not, why not? :-)