8 days since I've posted, so I suppose it's about that time, huh?

Thursday the 20th was a strange day. I went out that night with my friend Rachel, stumbled home a little drunk, and when I wiped the crusty out of my eyes the following morning, I noticed a note on my desk that said "Don't forget you're going to Vegas."

Going to Vegas? When?

For that day. What can I say? I'm pliable when I'm drunk. If you ever want me to do anything, just get to me after my fourth shot of Jager. Don't worry, I'll do it.

Kill the Queen while she's sitting at an Angels game? I don't see why not. Book a flight to Vegas for the next day? Easy peasy.

I'm writing this at the bar right now, and there's a random guy and girl off to my right fighting about a women's place in commercial crab fishing. She's going to win, mainly because he's a douche.

Anyhow, I flew out that Friday at 4:30pm. My first mistake of the weekend was not taking the $300 voucher to give up my seat. Had I done that, I would've came out ahead for the weekend. As it was, I finished even, minus airfare, which was cheaper than I thought it would be.

For the weekend, I played nothing but $1/2NL at Harrah's, the IP, MGM and Binion's. I thought about sitting down at a $4-$8 table, but I was not in the mood to grind out a small profit for the weekend. While down at Binion's on Sunday, we were approached by a man with a cum catcher that started the conversation with "Have I got something for you..."

Now, I don't know about you, but when a man starts a conversation that way with me, I insinctively clinch my ass cheeks tightly together. Fortunately, though, he didn't want a lesson in sodomy, he wanted to invite us to play in the ASWSOP to be played later that day in Benny's Bullpen.

Little did we know, a lot too late of course, that the tourney was a $30k freeroll with the top prize being a entry into the main event of this year's WSOP. I was just giddy to be playing in such a legendary place, that I didn't even question the prize pool. Even though it was sponsored by Vans, how was I to know that it was that great of a deal? Right, I could've asked. Too bad the structure sucked; 5k in starting chips doubling every 15 minutes. By the end of level 2 I was all in repeatedly.

I'm getting annoyed by the people to my right, so I'm going to log off before I throw my laptop at the fuckers head. I think I'll entitle my next post "Online poker sucks, but not as much as that guy over there".

State of the Rama-rama Address.

Bloggers, table mates, fellow masochists, lend me you ears(and hows-about a stack of your chips? No? Assholes). How many--I say--how many times are we going to get kicked in the taint while holding the non-euphamistic Pocket Rockets before we fight back? We don't have to live like this!

[crowd erupts]

Do you want to live like this?

"Hell no!"

Then it's time to make a change, a change to make this game we play enjoyable. Can I get a witness?

[crowd looks around confused and shrugs]

"HOLLA?"

So where does Rama-rama stand? Well, I'm here to tell ya. I've been playing this game, "Pokah", for almost 3 years now. I've had my ups and downs, peaks and valleys, I've felt like I've been on top of the world one night, and in the dirtiest slut-gutter(different than a gutter-slut, but not much) the next. I've had highs and I've had lows...

"We get the point!"

Where was I? Oh yeah...highs and lows and even recently felt like I was sitting on a plateau. As we all know, stasis is death. Or worse, a poker plateau is like dry-humping; while it can still be enjoyable, there has got to be something better out there.

"Dry humping! Rah!"

I'm sick of dry-humping.

"Dry humping! Boo!"

It's been fun, it's felt good, but goddamn it chaffes like a son-of-a-bitch, not to mention leaves me wholly unsatisfied. I want boobs! And I want...other stuff that I don't feel typing out because my mom might be reading(and it makes me giggle). Hi Mom! I want more than the humping while dry.

As the Donkey-Fucker(not Puncher or Hunter) would say "my game is sick". Seriously, folks, my game is, like, wicked-awesome or something. In my infantile opinion, I'm playing the best poker of my quasi-adult life. It's a good thing I'm too stupid to figure out how to get into the WPBT IRC chat, because you'd all have to listen to just how unreal I've been playing lately.

Thought the bankroll definitely isn't relaying this information, I have been playing well. This may not be well known, but does anybody know my biggest tournament downfall?

[crowd sighs and deadpans] "Collecting chips in early rounds..."

You've heard that before? Huh. I may have considered myself an ok player, but apparently I wasn't smart enough to collect early round dead-money. But all that has changed! No more push-n-pray around the first break, oh no. I'm a bona fide chip collector, yessirree Bob.

"Haaaaaaaaaa-lay-lu-yah!!"

Instead of going over results, or posting hand histories, I'm going to cut this short(because I lost my steam somewhere around the first crowd eruption) and leave you with this; the beer is on me.

"BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEER!!"

[crowd rushes stage, tips over live microphone] Squuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuealllllllll

Hey, Variance, can we talk? Good, good.

I was just sitting over here, you know, thinkin' 'bout stuff, and...

[throat-punch]

How'd that feel? Not very good, huh? I bet you weren't even expecting it, either. Bob and weave. Stick and move. Those are my mottos.

Now you know how I feel about you at this very moment. I understand that I'm cool, handsome and whatnot, so you're just naturally attracted to me. All the lizzadies are. But that doesn't mean you had to follow me around all weekend, from tournament to tournamet, and repeatedly feel the need to spastically say Hello! when I'm near the bubble. And the fact that in 4 out of the 6 tourneys you decided to knock me out when I was holding pocket aces, well, that was a nice touch, but wholly unecessary, really it was.

I'm not even sure what kind of point you're trying to prove here. What, that I'm a sucky player? Check. Mission accomplished. That I'm a momma's boy with daddy issues? Well, I don't know about that. I'm still trying to figure out what that means.

What do you get from the guy(or girl) that calls off 3/4 of their stack against my AA while they're holding K9c? It better be some mind-blowing deep-dickin' or piles of hundred dolla bills, y'all, or you're seriously getting gipped.

It's not that you eventually always find me that makes me so mad. It's that in every single last one of these tournaments, I had been playing pretty damn well. I'd finally shed my super passive skin and had chipped up quite nicely all the way around. I know it sounds crazy, but it's like I'm finally starting to get it. Hey, it sounds as crazy to me as it does to you.

But apparently getting it doesn't necessarily get you there.

Where?

How the hell should I know? I'm just the player, you're the one directing the turn of the cards. In the future, though, I'd appreciate it if you'd allow my aces to hold up just once, and you know, stop going all Lucy on me by pulling the damn football away yet again.

Thanks. As much as I am (your) dirty little whore, poker just isn't the same when I'm on my back.

(retard)ed note: No poker goodness in this post. I will have a decent post later this week about how I went all-in against some chick("chick" used in the most complimentary way possible) and she sucked out on me, big time. Yes, I did feel dirty afterwards. Until that time, you get one of my stupid stories that people seem to appreciate(and cringe while reading). Enjoy.

I shop at a discount warehouse for skinless chicken breast. There, I said it. Whew, that's a load off my back. It's less expensive, and the pieces are uniform in size in shape, whereas at a normal grocery store I'd have to sign away the naming rights for my first born(sorry, lil Gold-N-Plump), and the chicken breasts normally look more like a blob of white stuff rather than a piece of meat. Reminds of that busty albino girl I dated a few years back.

Anyhow, I need the above mentioned chicken as a source of protein to help rebuild muscles after I lift. Yes, I realize that I am my own potential source of protein, but I am not desperately in need of that much muscle. So 6lbs of wholesale chicken it is.

My trips to Costco usually produce some sort of situation that's fucked up enough that I'd like to write it down, but not fucked up enough that anybody that's not me would find humor in it. I have no good Costco stories today. The only thing that was even slightly interesting was the sale a blow-up carnival bouncy castles. A huge bouncy castle. When I saw it I peed myself and blamed it on the kid next to me. That little baby sure could pee a lot, not to metion his aim--right in my crotch--was awesome.

Unfortunately, though, someone must've tipped off the Costco management to my arrival, because the damn bouncy-bounce was on display on top of one of the aisles. So no, I have no good Costco stories today, but I do have a good gas station story. Lucky you.

I'm not even sure how much money I'm saving by buying my gas at Costco, really. It's probably like 3 cents a gallon, but hey, that adds up. Not quickly, of course, but I hope to save enough by 2013 to put a down payment on that King Size Snickers I've had my eye on for that last couple months. Hey, I can dream, too.

The gas tank on my Super-Mega-Turbo Geo is located in the back left quarter panel, so everytime I fill up, I have to make sure to approach the station with the gas pump on my left. Makes sense, right? Almost every single pump at this gas was in use, save one. Oddly enough, though, the old man in the Corolla using the pump right before the empty pump, he apparently needed to fill up his secret front end gas tank(the kind that I'd install in cars so that it EXPLODES on impact--on purpose--to erase dipshits like this from the planet), because he had pulled forward so far that his bumper was even with pump I wanted to use. My pump.

I pulled around his exact opposite of a luxury sedan, and after 3 attempts, had reversed and squeezed my way into place. Nice. The deal with all these wholesale clubs is that you need to buy a membership in order to enter the building. Along with that membership, you get--yes, you guessed it--a membership card. I thought it would be funny once to get an extra membership card for my member,(because it was a member long before I was, duh) but it turned less funny, much less funny, when I realized that it would have to get it's picture taken, too. No thanks.

I waddle my way up to the LCD screen on the front of the pump and read the instructions.

"Hello and welcome to Costco Gas. Please insert Costco magstripe card"

[Pulls Costco magstripe card out of wallet]

Ok, I can do this. So easy.

[inserts Costco magstripe card in machine]

"Remove card quickly"

Oh, that's how you're gonna be. I've met girls like you before.

[removes card slowly to spite the machine and inserts it back in wallet]

"Please wait. Processing...processing...Please select AmEx, credit card, or major ATM/Debit card."

[Selects 'credit card' and removes Visa from wallet]

Simple, simple. Everytime I go to the grocery store, or any store for that matter, I have to select 'credit card' on the card reading machine. I've never question why, I just do it.

[inserts Visa, removes even slower than before to make sure the machine knows what kind of card lovin' it's in for]

"Please wait. Processing...processing...card type invalid"

Invalid? Hey now, that's not very nice. Cripples are people too! Oooooooh, invalid. Sorry.

I must've done something wrong. Hit a wrong button or something, because this has never happened before.

[puts Visa back in wallet, pulls out Costco magstripe card. Time elapsed 3 minutes]

"Hello and welcome to Costco Gas. Please insert Costco magstripe card"

Shut up, don't act like we haven't already had this exchange. I know what I'm doing.

[inserts Costco magstripe card, removes it quickly before the pump can be bossy, places it back in wallet]

"Please wait. Processing...processing...Please select AmEx, credit card, or major ATM/Debit card."

[stares at screen and decide to select "Major ATM/Debit card"]

"Please insert card"

Oh, I'll insert it alright. I'll insert it so hard that you'll wish I hadn't inserted it so hard.

[removes Visa from wallet, jams it to the spot where the machine's cervix would be. removes it, spent.]

Was it good for you? You like that, huh?

[puts limp Visa back in wallet]

"Please enter PIN"

Well, that's just not right. I've never had to enter my Personal Identification Number number before! There's no way this can be right. I need to get back to the main screen.

[selects cancel. Elapsed time: 5 minutes, 30 seconds. Curse words: uncountable]

"Hello and welcome to Costco gas..."

Go fuck yourself.

"Please insert your Costco magstripe card"

[removes Costco magstripe card from wallet, inserts it into machine without care of how it asked for it.]

I don't care how you like it. It's no longer about you. It's all about me.

"Remove card quickly"

[sighs, obediently removes card. salivates. Elapsed time: 9 minutes]

"Card unreadable"

Motherfucker.

After 10 minutes of that, I gave up. I'd had enough. As I was just about to get in my vehicle of studliness, I noticed a small sign written in what appeared to be negative 4 font.

"In order to keep our prices down,as of January 1st, 2006 Costco will no longer accept Visa or Mastercard"

I drove away a defeated man, with only a chaffed and whimpering wallet(and an empty gas tank) to show for it.

Motherfucker indeed.