Waiting for the 6,000-Pound Precision-Guided Shoe to Drop

My sense of how the world works tells me that the attack will begin at or shortly after 5:00 PM PST today. The air assault for the Gulf War began at about 1:00 or 2:00 PM PST, as I recall, but despite the Shrub's bluster I don't see any percentage in commencing operations earlier than the expiration of the deadline, even though Saddam Hussein has already rejected the Shrub's ultimatum.

The lesson I personally learned from the Gulf War is that CNN Is Not My Friend. One can make oneself completely crazy by compulsively following the news coverage waiting for the war to start, not to mention the continuous coverage of the actual combat, all of it full of fear and alarm but conveying only the sketchiest factual information. But I want to know when the attack begins.

My compromise right now is to keep KPFA on the radio. Bless them, they have been playing their regular music programming (although now, at the noon hour, they've put on the radio equivalent of a talking-heads show). I'm confident that they will give me the information I need when I need it, but not make me crazy in the meanwhile.

There's nothing quite like kicking ass in a poker game to get your spirits up. I spent about forty-five minutes on PokerStars, playing in a couple of high-low-split seven-card stud games, at the 1-2 and 2-4 level. One rocket scientist in the 1-2 game called me a "fool" for jamming with my low lock into an obvious high hand when we were head-up. (What part of "freeroll" don't you understand?) And while he was carrying on about how I was only feeding the rake Albert Einstein went to town with the starting hand of (7d 10c) 7c. He backed into his flush to win half a pot; I was completely out of the hand. With enemies like these, who needs friends?

But it was in the 2-4 game that made my hour. I was dealt a pair of aces with a suited baby kicker in two consecutive hands. The first time, my aces were hidden, and I got three-bet by the bring-in when I reraised another ace's raise. I capped the third-street betting, and I caught another low card in my suit on fourth, and got four bets into the pot from the other three players. The outcome of the hand was that I made my flush and an eight low, but a better low took the low half, so I had to settle for doubling up. The second time, it was the same story, except that I kept catching low, finishing with a single pair of aces (losing to two pair) but a 65 for low, splitting another huge pot. Yeah, I got lucky, but the real luck was getting that kind of action for my good hands. Between the two games, I made $120 in three quarters of an hour — small beer at real stakes, but at the 2-4 level it's a pretty serious win.

So I logged off and went downstairs to change the laundry, and by the time I came upstairs again I was really feeling my oats, feeling my strength. These are dark times, and I'm going to need all the strength I can get, once the storm breaks. Why bother joining what sounds to me like a chorus of impotent liberal dittoheads who trash Nader voters and planners of direct actions? I can express my rage productively, at the poker table!