Random Atlantic City thoughts...

* I understand that the general narrative, as well as the consensus, is that AC is in even more trouble than it usually is, with the increased competition from Connecticut, Philadelphia, and now even Maryland. But I didn't find any of the places I visited depressing. That is to say, more depressing than it usually is, but as a native New Jerseyian, there's a part of that glum dilapidation that I enjoy, especially as you walk around the boardwalk on a cold winter's day contemplating life's mysteries as you watch the ocean. It's like you're in a Sopranos dream or the "Lonesome Day" video.


* I don't expect much from a place, honestly, just let me do my low-level grinding and pissing away of dough without breaking my balls. In that spirit, I highly recommend the Showboat poker room. The dealers (particularly David and Krista) and poker room boss Kellie were ridiculously friendly and allowed me to happily play away the hours, with pretty good cocktail (or in my case, coffee) service. Given the way some poker rooms operate, that's more than enough for me. If all you're looking for is 1-2 NL, 2-4 limit, or a daily tournament, well, I'd certainly recommend the Showboat over the Taj.

* And talking about that, the other place we spent a decent amount of time was the Taj Mahal, which had placards around advertising $1 blackjack. Seeing an open spot, I threw down a twenty, and was given a couple of dollars worth of quarters. I was planning on tipping more, but sure, let him give me some quarters I thought. After I put down my $2 bet the dealers pointed to a small circle to my left; the quarters are for the surcharge you have to pay for each bet below $5. Clearly, I didn't read the fine print.

Even more clearly, this is bullshit. I'm going to give you $50, Trump, why are you going to kick me in the balls to take $52? I know I'm a cheapskate, you don't have to nickel-and-dime me so ridiculously. And for the obvious "gamble somewhere else if you don't like it" comeback, well that's the fucking point. Besides, if it's so painful for you to have a $1 table don't frickin' advertise it. Having a bunch of $5 tables would have suit me just fine. Needless to say, I could hardly wait to get on the internet to express my outrage and warn my fellow grinders...

So...anybody, can I borrow a twenty? You know I'm good for it.

Back from vacation, and I see not much has changed.

Palin's still an idiot.

OK, kids, behave while the blogger's gone...

Heading up to Atlantic City for a couple of days with bro, and I can never go up there without thinking of Zero Mostel's exclamation in this clip (28 seconds in)...

Today's news, in sonnet.

Repub Congress throwing tantrums
instead of doing actual work?
Used to be the inner sanctums
where they'd hold the circle jerk.

Auntie Joan says Fox is hatin'
'cause she gave Sarah a peltin'.
Ask me, I think they're just waitin'
until they're sure Joan stops her meltin'.

No more Globes for Ricky G.?
Will this doom his film career?
You're telling me we'll never see
That Ghost Town sequel? Well, oh dear.

Not a sonnet to the letter?
Brother always did it better.

For what it's worth, you'll need to speak slooooooowly...

I called our congressman's office today to let him know I was against repeal. I was a little surprised the aide picked up the phone right away, as Mr. Perriello's lines were usually super-busy whenever a healthcare vote was scheduled. But the aide was polite, although it took him longer to note my address then for us to discuss repealing the Affordable Care Act. He simply noted I was against repeal and thanked me (after I had thanked him for his time).

If you'd like to let Rep. Hurt know your opinion before the vote, his # is (202) 225-4711.

8 Bits O' Nevsky - It's not faaaaaair edition...

I've been following semi-regularly developments on the Wii RPG The Last Story...



With its above-par-for-the-Wii graphics and action-based gameplay that resembled a multiplayer Demon's Souls, I was getting increasingly agitated, mostly in the pants region, while I was waiting to hear when it would be released in the U.S.

And the answer is, of course, that it isn't. Dammit. I haven't been this disappointed since the West was deprived Tingle's Rosey Rupeeland...

Way to stay classy, Maine...

I'm so disappointed in that gorgeous state for voting in this asshole.

But I'm not sure what's worse, being an asshole (because he could have kissed off the NAACP without being an asshole) or suggesting that because his son is black he has the right to be an asshole.

Don't believe me? Here's the quote...

When asked about the NAACP's criticism that this is part of a larger pattern, LePage replied: "Tell them to kiss my butt. If they want, they can look at my family picture. My son happens to be black, so they can do whatever they'd like about it."

What the fuck does that even mean?

Well, as much as I hate to do this, it's boycott time. I promise you I'm not going to drink one bottle of Moxie no matter how much I wish to savor its intricacies while this nutjob's guv. And I'm writing a letter to the delightful Tim Sample, I doubt he's going to stand for this.

Your move, asshole.

Here's a post for bro...

And unlike its author, I have no problem saying that despite everything, Colin Baker IS my favorite Doctor...

While we all take the time to process the events of this past weekend and reassess our own roles in the national discourse, we should also remember who the true victim is in all of this.

And of course, it's Sarah Palin.

I don't know why I thought that even this might have been a time where she would say something like "clearly we should all take a moment to reflect upon our rhetoric", which pretty much everyone has been saying (even li'l ol' me). Heaven forbid that even once she and her apologists not sharpen their rhetorical daggers and give the "I'm being unfairly blamed" strawman a few more stabs.

And needless to say, it's anti-Semitic for anyone to point out that her use of "blood libel" is charged, so let me just say that there's no doubt in my mind that her use of it is clearly NOT anti-Semitic. It is, like most of the things she says, woefully inaccurate and, perhaps accidentally (but who knows?) yet another opportunity to provoke a response about which she can respond with more false outrage and victimization.

*sigh* She's going to be our next president, isn't she?

It's hard to chill the fuck out...

When the teabaggers insist on being assholes...

My one-word review for Relay Foods? Fanfuckingtastic.

I kept driving by the Relay Foods truck on the way home from work, so we thought we'd sign up and give it a try. After doing that, I don't think we're going to be able to go back.

After a quick sign-up on the website, you basically plan out your shopping, pay for it by Sunday at midnight (or the day before the pick up day you want) and go to your drop-off place the following day. I arrived and the kind gent had everything ready for me in one of those plastic recycling tubs, with the dairy and meat products in a portable cooler. It took about five minutes to confirm everything and I was on the way.

The Mrs. was very impressed with the quality of the produce, which was one of the concerns that we had (actually, they did a much better job of picking stuff out than I ever do). I, of course, liked having another excuse to do something on the internet, and really appreciated the running total the website provides, since I never seem to keep under budget normally.

Any complaints? Not really, save the other customers who were tearing out of the Fry's Spring Beach Club parking lot as if they were rehearsing for CHiPs. It was a pretty fucking awesome experience, and one I'd definitely recommend to my fellow C-Ville residents.

Hopefully, we can all chill the fuck out a bit.

As the congresswoman recovers, and we mourn those who lost their lives, there's been enough spitting on the blogs. I'll just link to Rep. Grijalva's statement and leave it at that.

And I'll be sure to go back to blogging about stupid shit ASAP...

There are no words...

This is just horrible. Condolences Best hopes to her and her loved ones.

Just what is this world coming to?

Thank the heavens for rational nerds...

As we have a very persuasive argument here to not succumb to nerd-twitches and buy the Star Wars Blurays.

For me, argument #2 is the persuasive one, that in order to get the extras, you HAVE to buy The Complete Saga, and therefore, the prequels. I've always been very picky about the DVDs I purchase and value quality over quantity, eschewing impulse buys and only having things that I felt were accurate reflections of who I was as a person and of the artistic temperament of my soul.

You know, like The Ant and the Aardvark.
The Pink Panther and Friends Classic Cartoon Collection, Vol. 5: The Ant and the Aardvark

So thanks again, nerds, for talking me off the ledge. You truly are the guardians of all that is good in our society.

Sure, George, I'll take the broomstick. What's that, you want me to talk dirty, too? Fine. Um...it made no sense for Han to fire first! Ewoks are much cooler than Wookies! The concept of midichlorans ties in perfectly with the entire Jedi mythos!

I'm buying the Star Wars Blu-rays. And so are you. Let's all admit it now, we're part of the problem.

I saw Attack of the Clones in the theater. Twice. And defended it to friends. Surprisingly, they still are my friends.

Thanks, Blue Virginia, for depressing the shit out of me...

Our new congressman, again...



Sigh. Not that I think it's going to help, but I will be contacting the congressman to say I hope he votes against repealing the Affordable Care Act.

This post is true. Don't believe me? Ask my wife, Morgan Fairchild...

I didn't really feel like commenting too much about Michael Steele's obvious lie that War and Peace is his favorite novel, not even to cheaply remind readers I have a Russian lit degree.

I mean, it's true that this is part of the larger issue that no one except blogs tend to call Repubs on this shit, but it's not even that they're such brazen liars, it's that they're such bad liars. The pathological ability to spit out even the most obvious non-truths with a straight face is almost a requirement in the new Repub party, like they care about the deficit, so that a lie like Steele's is downright quaint.

But let's be honest, it's not like he scored points in that debate with that answer, when a more obvious applause-seeking choice would have been one of Coulter's obnoxious borderline-treason screeds. Heck, it's not even like the answer did lasting damage to the country like one of Palin's twit-twits about death panels, which of course, is now leading to actual deaths.

So I'm going to help. Mike, just FYI, if you're going to lie about reading a Tolstoy novel, pick Anna Karenina. The first line from the novel is its most famous quote:

"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

But if you do manage to make it to the end of the novel, here's a quote that you might want to share with your Repub friends, and one that was my Facebook quote for a while (spoilers ahead):

"I shall go on in the same way...falling into angry discussions, expressing my opinions tactlessly; there will still be the same wall between the holy of holies of my soul and other people, even my wife; I shall still go on blaming her for my own terror, and being sorry for it; I shall still be as unable to understand with my reason why I pray, and I shall still go on praying; but my life now, my whole life apart from anything that can happen to me, every minute of it is no longer meaningless, as it was before, but it has an unquestionable meaning of the goodness which I have the power to put into it."

I wish it was Dinosaur Month...

When I picked up my kid from daycare, she told me this month was Dinosaur Month. Why can't it be dinosaur month at work? You'd go into work, and the dinosaur would be there and you'd get your coffee, and you'd be all "hey" and the dinosaur would be like "hi, good to see you, watch Glee last night?" and you'd say "no, missed it", and the dinosaur would say "too bad, it was a good one".

But that never happens, because it's not dinosaur month at work.

It's never dinosaur month at work.

Sigh.

The Nihilist Party ain't wastin' no time...

They are starting by voting to repeal the Affordable Care Act, no doubt the first of many votes designed to do nothing so they can run in 2012 on the premise that the president hasn't done anything.

I'm ready to call my congressman to let him know how I feel, but his congressional website isn't up yet. Mr. Hurt, you're replacing the hardest-working man in Congress, maybe you should get your shit together.

Russia is safe from the threats of businessmen, Boris, and bloggers...

As someone who spent two of his formative years in Russia during a formative time in its history, like many I've grown increasingly concerned with the excesses of the Putin regime, especially with friends and now family living there. Count me in with everyone else who considers the Khodorkovsky sentencing to be utter bullshit. It is really amazing how unforgivably brazen this travesty was; having grown up with only the vaguest ideas of how dissidents and poets were treated in the seventies, I had thought that the days of the show trial were long gone, naive me.

Boris Nemtsov was often mentioned in the 1990s by my friends and peers as a man who could lead the country someday. Here's an old clip I remember watching with friends cheering on as he causes fascist asshole Vladimir Zhirinovsky to lose his shit and start throwing water and glasses. I believe the catalyst was when Mr. Nemtsov, then-mayor of Nizhii-Novgorod, invited Vlad to come to his city so he could be cured of his VD...


Mr. Nemtsov was just arrested and sentenced to 15 days in jail for protesting "illegally". My Russian mat' was never my strong suit, but I'm pretty sure the verb for "to rape someone in prison until the victim's asshole could conceivably fit the Caucasus mountain range" is och'kovat'. I hope it's a verb Mr. Nemtsov doesn't hear...

Mrs. Nevskaya introduced me to the blogger top_lap back when Russia was on fucking fire. He achieved some (perhaps unwanted) fame when Putin answered one of his critical blog posts with his special brand of petulant dickishness that he normally reserves for legendary Russian rock stars. So when Mr. Lap's blog had been down a week or so ago, my wife and I feared the worst. It's up and running now, so I recommend you all give it a read (via google translate if you're not a Russian reader). It's crude, childish, and hilarious. In short, it's the blogger I aspire to be.

S novym godom!