High On Poker

I had a terror dream last night. I don’t know what triggered it, probably my resurgent poker habit mixed with a very busy work week. All I know is that I woke up this morning in a freakin’ panic.

In my dream, I was in my office at work. I had a lull in my day, so I decided to play some poker on FullTilt. While playing, my boss came into the room. I tried to minimize the poker client, but whenever I did, my turn would come up and the FullTilt window would pop up on the screen (why does the word “screen” look so odd…)

My boss entered my office, the FT window popped up, and I was busted. I remember turning beet red in my dream and coming up with an explanation, which actually isn’t that bad, if not for the fact that it was being used to defend gambling on the job. I told the boss, “I’m just taking a mental break, a couple of minutes. It helps me focus and I am getting everything done that needs to be done.”

Sure, even that excuse would have me thrown out on my ass, but at least I still had my wits about me in dream land.

When I woke up, wifey Kim was getting up and I still had more than an hour of sleepy time. Still, it was hard to go back to sleep after a nightmare like that.

I played one game of online poker last night, a 45-person, $75 SNG. I figured with my recent $535 score, I could stand to take a shot. In reality, I wasn’t even sure I was in the mood to play, but the SNG had 44 people in it and seemed to be calling my name. Alas, I played poorly and barely paid attention, busting somewhere in the 30s. I decided after that to just skip poker for the night and concentrate on something, anything, else.

I saw the movie Choke recently. It’s based on a book by Chuck Palahniuk, author of Fight Club. Fight Club is one of my favorite movies AND books, and I have since read all of Palahniuk’s books. I’m no book critic, but from what I can tell, his books have gotten progressively worse, not unlike my second favorite author, Irving Welsh, the author of Trainspotting (and surprisingly many other great books, probably more quality books than Palahniuk…I recommend Acid House and Maribou Stork Nightmares.) It’s been a while since I read Choke, and I can’t remember if the movie changed the plot at all, other than the obvious truncating, but overall it was a decent flick. It really did feel like Fight Club’s younger, less cool brother, but frankly, that’s exactly what it is.

I also bought the Wii game, Call of Duty: World at War. This is the first WWII game I’ve ever played, and appartently WWII games have become their very own genre. Wii has a lack of decent games, sadly, so when I heard CoD:WaW was good and was a first person shooter, I had to buy it. There is little more enjoyable than shooting another human being in a videogame. I’m not talking about shooting aliens or mutants or zombies. I’m talking other people! It’s probably an unimportant distinction to most people, whether the graphics you are shooting represent a monster or a Nazi, but frankly, there is just something more…satisfying…about killing a Nazi. I wish I could explain it better than that, but I can’t. And is it wrong that I find it even more satisfying to shoot a cop, like in the GTA games. I don’t really want to shoot cops. Hardly. But it’s just the perverseness of the act that I think I find appealing. Come to think of it, most of the books I like, including the books by the two aforementioned authors, are about fucked up people doing fucked up things. I guess I just gravitate toward depravity for entertainment. Better to be a tourist in that world than a resident.

I’m playing 1/2 NLHE at the Wall Street Game tonight, where there are 10 seats and 21 people RSVP’ed to attend. 23Skidoo will be there, so that’s an extra bonus. The plan right now is to have dinner with wifey Kim and then head over. Let’s hope I can find a seat.

Until next time, make mine poker!