The Carver book is starting to get better. I thought I may be warming up to it, but the stories are simply getting better. Now the stories have neat parallels that actually comment on the human condition. I just finished the story Fever, and at the end Carlyle waves goodbye to his housekeeper, goes in his house, and shuts the door. It is made very clear that he is waving goodbye to his former life and shutting the door on it. This is what I was looking for. The story before it had the same thing, and another one that I finished recently was good, too. If you're interested in knowing what I consider good Carver, let me know because my book is upstairs and I'm lazy.
One of my managers at work must have got wind that I'm going to quit because I'm getting "the Treatment." "The Treatment" is when they simply stop scheduling me. Oh well, I still get the discount. We'll see which one of us this hurts more.
Yesterday, I saw a Burlington Northern Santa Fe truck driving on West O. I was following it briefly before I finally got my chance to pass the man traveling at hourly speed, but I noticed something. On the back of the Tahoe (it was a General Motors SUV, but I'm not totally sure it was a Tahoe) there were stickers that said "Pinch Point." They were located on sides of the lift gate. They were also located anywhere on the vehicle where there was something that opened and closed. It made me sad. This is where we're at as a country. We've litigated ourselves into stupidity because the law can't assume that we know that things that close *might* be able to hurt us. To solve the problem, I say we simply start printing the following message on all doors sold in the US. Warning: Everything outside of this door (and inside, including this door) may cause injury or death. Maybe tattoo it on the inside of our eyelids, although somebody could see because they could get hurt reading the tattoo. Despite the mini-anger that flashed inside of me, I also smiled as I recklessly sped off because I pictured a giant pinching the truck all over.
I ended up going 2-2 in heads-up matches yesterday, leaving me short the $4 vig. I would've gone 3-1, but I was crushing a guy 16k/4k, he got all in behind and hit his flush, went all in next hand with QQ vs my TT and doubled, and on the last hand I flopped 2 pair, got it all in vs his straight draw, and he hit it. Pretty sick 3 hands. I won 1 match this morning before I ran errands, then I came home and polished off another victory which bumped me over $330. I JUST finished my first $30 match and got shit on. On about the 3rd hand, with me having a small lead, I had 93hh in a limped hand and we took an A94 flop, I bet and he raised. I thought maybe he had an A so I just called. The turn peeled a 3, he checked, I bet pot and he called. The river peeled a 5 and he moved in. He doesn't have a 2 here, and he's very unlikely to have 2 pair because he would be scared of the 4 straight on the board. He has only 1 of 2 hands (so I thought); either a lone A or the 26. The move in was too quick for the 26, I put him on a lone A and called. After that cooler, I was left with just a shade over 1k chips, and it was only a matter of time before he put me away. I'm playing the same dude again and I'm definitely going to throttle him because he's not very good. Tomorrow I'll post about how bad I skinned this guy in 2 more matches. Focker out.
4 comments:
what is good carver?
also, we should sit awhile at sadies some night before you leave as all of my drinking friends are leaving me for other towns.
Good Carver from the anthology is: Fat (more enjoyable than good), Neighbors, One More Thing, The Third Thing That Killed My Father Off, So Much Water So Close To Home, Vitamins, Chef's House, and Fever. Fever and Chef's House really stand out to me as quite good, the rest are the one's with endings that didn't piss me off.
UPDATE: I botched my 2nd heads-up match with that guy. He had very obvious betting patterns, the problem was they showed up in 5 consecutive hands that threw me off. Min-Min-Pot meant strong, Pot-Pot-Check meant weak, Min-Pot-Min meant bluff. The problem is that his 2 weak hands in the 5-hand string were KK with an A on the flop and AA on a QxQ flop, and the strong hands came when I flopped top pair vs a set and then a boat to my 3 of a kind. 2 coolers in a row and now he won't play me again. Oh well, he will someday, and I've found another fish that I'm pummeling.
Bret, I'd probably read them closer if your poker posts resembled this one: http://mcsweeneys.net/links/poker/
Well, at the moment the poker section is more purpose built. I have a couple of friends who are interested in how I'm doing, and to be totally honest, I'm playing pretty boring, serious matches (for me). The problem is that they're not boring enough for me to have fun in (and thus report about), nor serious enough that there is any actual real drama. Eventually, I hope to be telling you glorious tales of me staring down $2000 bets and peering into the depths of my being and not deciding if I'm winning or losing, but deciding whether I'm ready to trust myself, if I'll ever be ready to trust myself. For insightful, entertaining, non-utilitarian accounts of poker, check out the link to Paul McGuire's blog in my list. He's a poker journalist, and this is his personal blog about poker. He's been on an understandable hiatus the past couple of days (understandable, he just covered 50 straight days of poker), but it's generally entertaining and sometimes quite powerful (read the blog about Vinnie Vinh, I believe it is called "The Ghost of Stu Ungar," quite near the bottom.
UPDATE: I won 2 consecutive matches to end up 2-2, losing the $6 vig and calling it a night. I played people who were really similar, so this is going to be a lot like the $20 matches. More tomorrow I'm sure.
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