July 8, 2010 I learned a lesson today: even those who seem to be well-adjusted, upstanding members of the business community can be complete psychopaths who will threaten you with bodily harm for the slightest perceived insult. Not everyone, it seems, is fully equipped to read and understand Standard Written English.
I’d say more, but I’m afraid of what might happen to me and my wife if I were to do so.
Posted in Not Poker 
Comments Off
May 3, 2010 I’m not the kind of person to ask for much from the poker community, but because of extraordinary circumstances here in Nashville I’m putting out this call for any assistance that any of you can offer. My city is drowning.
This past Saturday Nashville received 6.32 inches of rain, the third heaviest rainfall total in a single day since 1871. That caused the local streams and rivers to begin rising. Then on Sunday the city received another 7.25 inches of rain, the single largest rainfall in a single day since 1871. The Weather Channel says that the two-day total rainfall was equal to 28% of precipitation we usually get over the course of an entire year. The US Army Corps of Engineers is calling this a “once in 1,000 years event.”
LP Field across from downtown (Photo: Keith Gallagher)
The streams spilled over their banks and last night the Cumberland River, the heart of Music City, began to threaten downtown Nashville. More than 600 water rescues took place, but there were still a handful of people who died in the flood waters. Tens of thousands of people are still without communication to the outside world when phone cables and power lines went down and cell phone towers became overloaded. One of the city’s two wastewater treatment plants was submerged and went offline yesterday, and now the other treatment plant is being threatened as well; local and state officials are asking people to halve their water usage by only using water for drinking and food preparation. They fear a shortage of clean water by the end of the week if everyone doesn’t cooperate, and even with cooperation there’s still a chance that the entire 1.2-million-strong population of Metro Nashville could soon be drinking bottled water.
Second Avenue in downtown Nashville today (Photo: Keith Gallagher)
Overnight the rain stopped, but the water levels have continued to rise. The Cumberland River isn’t expect to crest until this evening, when it will hit 52.5 to 53 feet; flood stage is considered to be 41 feet. Thousands of people are already staying in shelters, and local charities are trying to provide food and water to thousands more. Even once the water is gone in a few weeks, there will be tens of thousands of people displaced. As you can see, we will be dealing with a very serious situation here in middle Tennessee for quite some time.
More flooding on the Nashville riverfront (Photo: Keith Gallagher)
Poker players are known for their generosity. If you can spare any sort of money at all to help, the people of Nashville and middle Tennessee would be grateful. Per my friends at Nashvillest, here are some charities that are accepting monetary donations:
Second Harvest Food Bank: Provide monetary donations to Second Harvest HERE. The Second Harvest offices are located in Metro Center and are currently inaccessible, so monetary donations are the best bet right now.
Salvation Army: Monetary donations are preferred and can be made online HERE or by phone at 1-800-SAL-ARMY.
The Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee: In partnership with the Mayor’s Office of Emergency Management, donate online to the Metro Nashville Disaster Response Fund and/or the Tennessee Emergency Relief Fund HERE (checks can be mailed to P.O. Box 440225, Nashville, TN, 37244).
If you’re able to send anything, please leave a comment so the people here in Tennessee will know who cared enough to offer assistance. I’m looking into setting up a charity tournament somewhere online in the very near future; details will be available as soon as I have them.
Posted in Not Poker 2 Comments »
January 8, 2010 One of the best things about being a blogger, other enjoying than the daily acclaim of the masses and knowing for certain that you’ll go down in history as having made a deep and serious impact on humanity, is the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker. It’s been a fantastic event since they began it in 2005 and I’m looking forward to taking part again this year. I’ve come very close to prizes in the past and hopefully will have a shot at finally breaking through this year. Hopefully we’ll see each other at the tables!
I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker! This PokerStars tournament is a No Limit Texas Hold’em event exclusive to Bloggers, you too can take part by registering on WBCOOP
Registration code: 056789
Posted in Poker No Comments »
October 21, 2009 Riggstad and I finished up our November Nine handicapping over at Full Tilt’s Poker From The Rail yesterday. Part Two of the series, which was published last week, took a look at Jeff Shulman, Joe Cada, and Kevin Schaffel. Part Three, published yesterday, dealt with the short stacks: Phil Ivey, Antoine Saout, and James Akenhead. Thanks again to the inimitable AlCantHang for inviting me to take part in the best writing assignment I’ve had this month.
Now for something completely different, those of you who have to play Tech Support Guy for every relative in your extended family will enjoy this from XKCD:
If you're not reading XKCD, you probably aren't laughing enough.
Posted in 2009 WSOP, Poker No Comments »
October 11, 2009 According to a new NHL Fans’ Association poll, it’s time for NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman to go. I suppose that this means I was ahead of the curve.
The NHL decided to lock its players out for the 2004-05 season about two months after my buddy Charlie Tuttle and I purchased season tickets. Needless to say, we were a little miffed. I eventually canceled my tickets and wrote a letter to Craig Leipold, the man who then owned the Predators (and who was also instrumental in getting the lockout going), telling him why I was no longer going to let him hang on to my money. I also called for the NHL to sack its commissioner, the aformentioned Gary Bettman, who was even then in the process of running the NHL so far into the ground that even Major League Soccer got more respect than the fastest game on earth.
A few weeks after Charlie died, the NHL and its players finally worked out an agreement to get back to the ice. Great timing, boys! I went to two games at the beginning of the 2005-06 season but it just wasn’t the same without Charlie there. I also hated the idea of giving any more of my money to two organizations run by men who preferred scorched-earth tactics to finding a workable solution. So, I stopped paying attention to hockey altogether. I’m pretty sure that’s not what Bettman’s league was looking for, but it’s what they got.
I’ve only watched a handful of games on television since that time, and I haven’t been to a single one in person. But if the NHL decides to sack Bettman, I promise here and now that I’ll buy a 10-game pack for the 2009-10 Predators season. I’d love to have a reason to catch live hockey again, NHL. Make it happen.
Posted in Not Poker No Comments »
October 8, 2009 My old friend AlCantHang was nice enough to invite me to a little WSOP November Nine handicapping on Full Tilt’s Poker From The Rail blog. That’s not the sort of opportunity that comes along very often, so of course I jumped on it. Joining me in assessing the chances of the nine guys who will be sitting under the bright lights in November is another poker friend, the one and only Riggstad.
We’ve divided the work up into three posts examining three players each, beginning with the biggest stacks and working our way down. Accordingly, the first post deals with Darvin Moon, Eric Buchman, and Steven Begleiter. Head on over to Poker From The Rail and check the first installment!
Posted in 2009 WSOP, Poker 2 Comments »
August 19, 2009 An internet friend today linked to a Talking Points Memo post featuring emails from people in Australia with their reaction to seeing American media coverage of the health care debate. “Everyone is puzzled by our retarded outrage,” my friend wrote.
The lunatic fringe has indeed been given the opportunity to show up in force at town hall meetings, those Clinton-era mutations of the New England tradition that are curiously unsuited to accomplishing anything of substance outside of their native environment. Fringers have taken that opportunity, like they always do, to jump and yell mind-bogglingly bizarre things – and, most importantly, to be caught on camera doing all those things so television can show them to us. We’re all rightfully shocked by the flat-out retarded things these people come up with. But the problem I see again and again is that these crazy folks are being made out in the media to be the *core* opposition to the Democratic government.
The same leftist punditocracy who blanched at Bush-era accusations of not supporting the troops or loving America’s enemies for opposing policies with which they disagreed are now all too willing to play the role of propagandists for a cause they believe in, leveling blanket accusations of racism or stupidity or just plain craziness at anyone who mistrusts either the government’s intentions or abilities on this issue. Painting all opponents of the Democratic health care reform plan with the crazy/stupid brush is the same sort of rhetorical tactic the Bush/Cheney administration and its cheerleaders used for eight years, with the only difference being that it relies on belittling others’ sanity and intelligence and political correctness instead of belittling their patriotism. Check out this post at Reason for a recent round-up of such rhetoric, which includes links to six previous round-ups of rhetoric.
I’m not a fan of the Democratic-controlled government’s proposal for a lot of reasons. My opposition is based partially on practical concerns (e.g. how on earth is a dead-broke government going to pay for this plan?) and partially based on principle (e.g. government reform is inherently less efficient and responsive than market reform). Because of that – or as some people seem to think these days, despite that – you won’t find me waving a gun at a town hall meeting or screaming “Heil Hitler” and sticking my tongue out at fellow town hall attendees or otherwise acting like a buffoon because I lie awake at night, drenched in sweat, intensely afraid that George Soros and his socialist minions will soon convene my death panel, ready to condemn me so they can take my wife away to their communal love farm and have their filthy, European ways with her.
Instead I’m doing a lot of reading and head-shaking – and basically staying silent on the sidelines. You see, my peer group is almost universally in favor of the government’s current idea of reform. We are all relatively young and middle- to lower-middle-class. We all also happen to think that the current system is a pretty shitty affair. But where they see a benevolent government that cares about them trying to step in and solve their problems, I see a small cadre of powerful people trying to quickly force their wishes on a population that clearly has some reservations about going along with the plan.
But I can’t really get that across to anyone who supports the government right now. The moment they find out that I’m not on their side, I get lumped in with screaming “birthers” and Sarah Palin and the entire right wing of the GOP that is so completely opposed to most of the things that are important to me. The current tenor of American political discourse doesn’t allow me to be a reasonable person who agrees with my friends on plenty of things but happens to disagree on this particular issue. Instead of being the principled opposition, instead of being a person who reads and analyzes and considers, instead of being a citizen who’s concerned about the future of his country, I’ll always be an outraged retard.
Posted in Not Poker, Uncategorized 8 Comments »
June 4, 2009 It’s been nearly four years since my good friend Charlie Tuttle died. Since he left us, it’s been impossible to miss that his presence is still here in the form of all the people he touched.
With that in mind, I’m putting together a gathering of all the people who loved Charlie at the site of his funeral outside Nashville on Sunday, June 21st – the day before the fourth anniversary of his death. We’re going to do potluck food, there’s a pool to swim in, and at sundown we’re going to launch another Viking ship with some messages for him.
If you’re interested in attending, log in to Facebook and look for my Charlie Tuttle Day event. If you can’t attend but would like to pass a message along to be read to his friends and family or to be put on the ship for the sundown ceremony, get in touch with me on Facebook or by email (jason -at- jasonkirk -dot- net).
Posted in Not Poker No Comments »
Cleaker 2.1 Theme created by Adam Walker Cleaveland with Widget support added by ckwebb.com 
content rss | comments rss
