Out of the Dust

The family and I headed down to the Western Development Museum today to check out the Festival of Trees. It's been a few months since I've been to the museum, and they've finally completed their work on the Depression Era exhibit.
The scope of the Depression in the 30s is almost unfathomable.
They have statistics posted, and anecdotes from the era that help to illustrate just how bad it really was.
One display mentions that out of one community of 895 families, 890 were on a government relief program. Another mentions a rural area that consisted of 300 farms. In the space of one year the federal government seized the crops of 285 of these farms for back taxes, leaving families to survive on as little as $100 per year.
People were starving...literally. Tommy Douglas tells of visiting farmers, and the shame his hosts felt, serving up 3 fried eggs to a family of four, or pancakes with sugar and water for syrup.
In a mock up of a typical depression era house, an old man turned to me and said "Do you remember any of that?" with a bright grin. He looked to me to be in his late 80s, early 90s.
I laughed and said "No, do you?"
He said yeah, and we talked for a bit. I find the depression era in the dustbowl fascinating, and he was great to talk to. He talked of families leaving everything and heading north. Modern farms where they would leave brand new houses, brand new equipment, laying around for the taking. He talked of waking up in the morning to find the fences buried in dust.
After a while I said to him "I'm a little worried that it looks like it might happen again here pretty soon."
He touched me on the shoulder and said "If it does it'll be worse than it was then. You've got water and power and heat to pay for now. Back then we all got heat burning wood and coal and we pumped our own water and didn't have electrical to worry about it. It would be a lot worse if it happened today."
Later I asked my wife if she'd heard what he'd said.
"Yes," she said, "and I saw the look on your face too. That's terrifying."
It is.

Why having a 6 year old is so much fun.

"Did you hear Parker had a nosebleed at school?" my wife asked.

"No, I didn't. Parker what happened?"

"Well..." deep 6 year old breath fills 6 year old lungs. "I was just walking and I just fell. I was gluing and my glue bottle didn't work very well so I was using a popsicle stick to glue the noodles on my noodle tree but my fingers got all gluey so I got up to go to Madame's desk and then I just tripped and I fell down on my nose."

Mommy: "So you need new glue then."

Parker: (chuckle) "Yup."

Round and Rounder

I've had a rough couple of weeks.
I've been a bit under the weather for a few weeks, getting a few hours less sleep every night, and it's affecting my thought processes a bit. My anxiety is running a little high, my frustration tolerance is a little low, and work is making me nervous. It's probably a bad time for me to be watching Rounders.
Rounders is the movie that got me interested in no limit hold 'em back in the day. Tonight I'm lost in bittersweet memories of my brief career as an online poker player. I remember spending time with my kids. Taking them to school, picking them up. Making them lunches and supper. I remember paying my bills on time and driving a hawt Cadillac. I remember the feeling of complete and utter freedom that I enjoyed. Mostly I remember the deep satisfaction that came from knowing that I lived exclusively on my wits.
It had to end. I always thought it would end with me getting too caught up, moving up to stakes that were too high, getting hooked on the thrill and forgetting the rules. But that didn't happen. It ended when the US Government tacked a few anti-gaming laws on to the Safe Ports Act in 2006, and 82% of players disappeared from the net overnight. 2 months later I'd sold the Cadillac, was back to punching clocks, and living paycheck to paycheck. I've bounced around a few things since then, and nothing else seems to fit.
So tonight I'm at the end of a rough couple of weeks and Rounders is on t.v. and I'm remembering that I started playing online with the intent to learn the fundamentals to beat the brick and mortar game. And it's occurred to me that all the online players these days had to go somewhere. Maybe they're out at the poker tables on highway 219...playin' too many hands, overplaying middle pairs, sticking with big slick too long. Maybe the games are as easy as all the 2+2ers always said they were, as soft and loose as feathers falling from a torn pillow where a dream once broke. Maybe they are. And maybe they aren't.
Maybe the best thing for me to do is go in tomorrow on my day off again, take my kids with me because there is no sitter again, and have my daughter miss her basketball game again, just like my other daughter had to miss her dance class, because I had to work.
Or maybe I should roll up a stack of bills and see what I can turn it into.
Like Mikey says though, "You can't lose what you don't put in the middle."

What A Wonderful World This Could Be

I just had a movie night with the family. We watched the movie Wall-E. This movie is set on a planet Earth that has been abandoned by humanity because pollution and waste have made life unsustainable.
The kids loved the movie. One disturbing aspect of the film however is that after being abandoned by humanity, it took 700 years for the first plants to reappear.
At bedtime, as I was tucking my 6 year old into bed, she asked me if I thought the Earth could ever end up like that.
I had to answer her honestly. I told her that if we didn't change our ways it sure could, and that there were places that were already like that. But then I also told her how there are a lot of people that are working very hard to make sure that it doesn't.
I told her how the world has already changed in my lifetime. That we didn't do any recycling when I was a kid, and had never even thought about it. I told her that it looks like cars probably won't be running on gasoline anymore when it comes time for her to start driving, and that will mean a lot less pollution. I also told her that we do what we can to make the world a better place, by voting for leaders that care more about the planet than making the companies in our country richer. I told her that as the problem gets worse, our leaders will work harder to solve it, and that I think the world will be okay.
But I honestly don't know if it will. And I fear for the future my children will inherit. It's a feeling of terrible powerlessness.

Act of War.

It was my daughter's 9th birthday recently, and we're throwing a party for her tomorrow.
A lot of the activities and crafts that she wants to do hinged on certain conditions that her mother laid out.
One of these activities was to make a bunch of pillowcases tonight to give to her friends as gifts tomorrow.
Mommy told my daughter that she had to finish her cleaning first, because the pillowcases would take an hour to do, and she had to be in bed by 9.
My daughter claimed to have misunderstood, and thought it meant she had to be done cleaning by 9. Her mom then said tough luck, no pillowcases, and my daughter was devastated.
I heard her crying "But I worked so hard..." and it was a tone from her that I don't hear too often. She does her fair share of complaining and crying for things, but this one seemed particularly painful to her. It reminded me of when she was potty training, and she wanted a dollhouse that we had set up for her as a reward for the first day she stayed completely dry. At the end of the night as she got sleepier, she had an accident and burst into these deep, pained sobs, so disappointed that you could feel it coming off of her.

I stepped in on her behalf with my wife (out of earshot of the little girl, because I didn't want any friction) and asked if we could rethink it. She accused me of undermining her, which I can understand, and which is why I approached her privately. To our daughter I had backed her up completely, emphasizing the importance of listening to Mommy.

I left it alone after my wife got really mad at me. She did eventually go and get my daughter to do the craft. Now she's really pissed off at me however, and I know that it's the kind of pissed off that is never going to get better. It won't be forgotten. It will be locked away somewhere to fester and grow and explode in the middle of another confrontation somewhere down the road. I'm fine with that.
Here's the thing.
I hate my own birthdays. Birthdays to me are fraught with disappointment. They're like an annual perfomance review conducted by that hypercritical little voice in my head that always tries to convince me I'm no good. Birthdays are reminders of my failings. They're an unmistakable and unavoidable yardstick of my mortality. I get so tremendously down that I just want to hide from the whole world, including my family. I think a lot of that is centered on experiencing huge disappointments on virtually every birthday I've ever had. I don't recall any birthday parties other than my 9th, which was my first birthday at a new school. I do recall a lot of birthdays that were celebrated with apologies rather than gifts and parties.
I recall a lot of very lonely birthdays. The best birthday present that I ever received as a kid was a trip to the arcade with my brother-in-law to blow 10 bucks.
What I'm getting at is that when I heard my daughter's aching disappointment tonight, I felt all over againt the pain and disappointment that I've felt over 38 birthdays, and I don't want her to feel that way.
I think that if we can limit the disappointments and the hurt while she's young, she might somehow grow up to be an okay kid, despite having her father's genes.

Jamie Oliver is a Filthy Little Pig

So I was watching Jamie Oliver making one of his rustic recipes on one of his shows. At one point he dipped his finger into the stock, then licked his finger to check the flavor. Deciding it needed more salt he used the same finger he'd just sucked on to pinch a little salt and toss it into the stock. He then poured the stock over his soup ingredients, and used all the fingers of both hands to push the ingredients down into the stock, essentially dipping all of his finger tips into the soup. Filthy little pig I tell ya.

The Future of Online Gaming Hangs in the Balance

The rumors and speculation on the future of Online Poker continue to swirl. While the dying embers of the Bush Administration continue to pursue their moral agendas at the expense of an entire industry, even with mere weeks left to govern, there are hopes that Obama will reverse any and all decisions concerning UIGEA. The following article hints at some light at the end of the tunnel for gamers, but it also paints a dark picture as well. There's mention that Microgaming sites will no longer accept US players. This means the entire Prima network, home of of some of the last great playa bonuses on the net now joins the list of once mighty greats like Party Poker Poker Room, leaving only the HUDbot infested sites of Pokerstars and Full Tilt as choices for the majority of players. Here's the story.
President-elect Obama and his advisers have established a website at change.gov listing their plans for governing after his inauguration. Among the programs and ideas expressed on the site is a pledge to protect the Internet from censorship and government interference, a promise which brightens the prospects for the online gambling industry.

According to the site, among Obama's thoughts for dealing with technology are strong opinions about the Internet. The very first line in a detailed explanation of plans for the administration's approach to scientific matters says that Obama expects to "ensure the full and free exchange of ideas through an open Internet and diverse media outlets."

Listing goals, the site says, "Protect the Openness of the Internet: A key reason the Internet has been such a success is because it is the most open network in history. It needs to stay that way. Barack Obama strongly supports the principle of network neutrality to preserve the benefits of open competition on the Internet."

This is a piece of good news for online casinos and their players after several unhappy items have been detailed in recent days. First it was revealed that Microgaming sites will no longer accept new patrons from the United States. Then came the stunning news that the Treasury has finalized regulations to implement the UIGEA, only weeks before a new Congress may seek to repeal the horrific law.

The language of the transition website leaves no room for spin. Obama has declared himself fully behind an open and free Internet. With a Democratic Congress enjoying a healthy majority in both Houses, Obama should be able to team with Barney Frank, Jim McDermott, Pete Sessions, Shelly Berkley, Robert Wexler, and other Congressional leaders to swiftly undo any actions forced through by the Bush administration in its closing days.

Anything less would be the breaking of a written campaign promise.

The New Political Landscape and the Online Gambler

I have no love for G.W. G.W ruined my very happy life when he tacked on some anti-online gaming legislation to the Safe Ports Act. I'd been playing online poker for a living for nearly 2 years at the time, and at no time before or since have I ever been so financially secure. The day after the legislation passed online poker was dead for me.
My payment processor announced it was going out of business, and traffic at my particular site went from about 40 tables to 4. It was estimated at the time that 82%of all online poker players disappeared from the game overnight.
With the latest election, there had been some faint hope that some of the laws might be repealed. However G.W. and his team have seen fit to put the final nail in the coffin of the online poker player.

By Brian Chan on November 8, 2008

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Observers are wondering what has caused the sudden finalization of regulations to enforce the UIGEA by the Treasury Department. Both online casinos and banking industry leaders are surprised and appalled by the announcement that official implementation of the law against payment transactions involving Internet gambling will move forward, despite lack of adequate legislative definition.

Steve Cohen, a Democratic Representative from Tennessee, has asked the White House to explain what role may have been played in the Treasury's decision to act by William Wichterman. Wichterman is White House Deputy Director of Public Liaison, but his previous job was as a lobbyist against online gambling for the National Football League.

Cohen requests in a letter to Fred Fielding, White House Counsel, to explain the story from Treasury officials that Wichterman "has been a source of considerable political pressure to speed this regulation through.''

Neither Wichterman nor spokesmen for the Treasury nor the Federal Reserve would respond for comment.

Internet casino industry leaders were surprised by the Treasury action, coming as it does during the transition from the Bush administration to the Obama Presidency. Testimony before the Treasury by banking and government officials had panned the UIGEA, calling it unworkable and suggesting that implementation would put the American banking system at a competitive disadvantage.

Cohen said in his letter, "I am surprised that your administration would seek to rush through a rule that would saddle an already ailing financial services sector with a burdensome rule in the current economic environment."

The Nature of the Beast

This is the kind of thing we do at work. We julienne foods, we brunoise, we blacken, we emulsify, we saute and braise and season and grill and plate. We create beautiful little masterpieces for our guests to eat, and we go beyond taking pride in our work. We're a little elitist about it.
Across the hall from us there is a Denny's restaurant, and I know a few of the people working there, including one of their managers. He came into my kitchen the other day to tell me about a restaurant supply company he'd just discovered that could get me great deals on grill bricks to clean my flat top with.
I told him I didn't have a flat top in my kitchen and he looked shocked and surprised and said 'Really?" and I said "Really. We don't fry stuff, we saute" to which I had hoped all of my cooks would have given me some propz on, but they didn't. Oh well. I thought it was good.
I mention all of this, because despite our respect for the culinary arts, our maniacal obsession with speed and accuracy and precision, we're a pretty coarse bunch.
Case in point.
One of our guys recently took in a concert, and he mentioned how there had been more of a fire and light show at it than at any other show he'd seen before.
I asked him "Did you drop for it? Are you still warping?" and everybody in my kitchen laughed and knew exactly what I was talking about. The culinary arts are one of the few remaining that are still almost exclusively the domain of the true Bohemian. Sub-culture r us.

Polar Bear Dream

My sleep cycle has been pretty wacky lately because of work, and that generally results in my mind going a little wacky, which it has.
The other night I have vivid dreams. I mean VIVID, like they really stuck with me.
I dreamt that I was driving home alone from Edmonton, and I pulled into one of those half abandoned little towns that line the Yellowhead. I decided to go for a walk up and down the Main Street, and I noticed a little alley way that seemed to lead into a courtyard of sorts.
The courtyard turned out to be the ruins of some buildings long since abandoned, and the walls were all pink and red, and covered in Pagan writings. I was scavenging around because there was a lot of cool old stuff laying around, when I found myself entering a long dark cave. There was nothing in the cave, and when I turned to leave, there was a young polar bear growling at me like a vicious dog would.
It kept lunging at me, and I found a sharpened wooden stake to keep the bear at bay. The bear kept changing in size, from cub to full grown, and circling me, making the occassional hungry lunge. The cave also kept cycling from light to dark to pitch black, from warm to cold. This seemed to go on for hours, until a forest ranger came into the cave and picked up what had turned into a little bear cub and took it away, leaving me feeling pretty foolish.
So this dream really confused me, and I told my wife about it when I woke up, and I told my coworker about it at work, and then I told one of the waitresses and she got all freaked out because she had also had a dream about being trapped in her house by a polar bear that kept circling her. This also freaked me out a bit as well, and after the initial creepiness of it, I was kind of tickled by it.
But I'm still confused as to what the dream means.
I don't believe that dreams are any sort of prognostication or mystic communique. I'm more inclined to see them as the primal mind opening a window on to the subconscious through metaphor and simile.
To interpret my dream, I then need to think about what polar bears could possibly be a metaphor for with me, and to do this, I need to brainstorm everything I know about polar bears.
-they live in the snow
-they have hair that keeps water away from their skin and preserves heat
-if you eat their liver you can die of a Vitamin A overdose
-they are one of the only predators that will actually track and hunt down a man.
-in Churchill MB people take the corners wide when walking the streets for fear they may run into a polar bear.
-they are white and have black noses
-they have the cutest babies of anything. Period.
-they are mean
-I fear them
-they eat fish and seals and people
-they weigh a lot
-they are strong

My first inclination is to view the bear as a harbinger of winter, and the dream itself as a reminder to me that I have a fight against winter ahead of, that might result in my death if I'm not careful. I'm talking about how I lose my will to live in the winter, and I think this bear might symbolize that I'm actually quite scared of how bad I'll get over the dark months.
Anyway, that's all for today. Comments and feedback welcome.