Underwater, Right, See You Later Then

David Blaine's off again, this time he's going to spend a week underwater and try to break the world record for holding one's breath. There's no doubt of course that this will be some trick, not least because holding your breath for 9 minutes (the record is 8'58" according to the article) is certain to give you serious brain damage (if you're not suffering from it already).

So wot u sa so wot so wot, and rightly so, but the bit in this article that angried up the blood was the comment that

"Anytime he's done anything in New York, the reaction has been overwhelmingly positive. New Yorkers are cool about this kind of thing."

Referring of course to the treatment Blaine received on the South Bank, where people would hozz eggs at the box and deliberately eat massive burgers in front of him and rub their stomachs yum yum comedy style. And quite rightly too because we all know it's a load of bollocks. It wasn't him in the box the whole time, there were lookey likeys swapped in and out when the box was "cleaned" every couple of days.

New Yorkers aren't "cool" about this if they "touch the sphere and offer their support". They're fucking stupid. I vote to throw a hungry shark in, and see who makes who disappear. Magic is bent.

Big Money Make A Million Dreams

Good luck to Roland de Wolfe in the WPT Championship ; he's second out of the remaining 19 players. I've never played against Roland (having been such a poker shut-in for the last 2 or 3 years :-)) but I understand that he goes for it and basically doesn't give a fuck, which is absolutely the mindset you need at this altitude. Overnight, Ross Boatman and Surinder Sunar were the other two English players left in, but I just couldn't see them having enough devil in their game to get hold of enough chips. Sure enough Ross finished 20th and Surinder is 19th out of 19 with a bowl of rice. I'm not saying they're bad players, not at all, but in this kind of field I think you have to take risks. Be prepared to die in order to live. Still, 19th and 20th trouser $100K each so make your own choice.

Art For Art's Sake

A change of pace last night as several of us attended an artistic bash. After a quick trip to the S&M Cafe to perk us up [1] we rolled up to the Great Eastern Hotel where a colleague of ours was exhibiting his massive fuck-off Tesla Coil.

A few words of explanation. Colin is ever the mad scientist and his latest project was to while away the winter evenings constructing a giant Tesla Coil with which he could take out half the electrical equipment in Enfield, strike down his enemies, etc. etc. Having completed his work, however, he found that there wasn't actually much he could do with it except show it off to admiring nerds (as many of us as there were). By the time 'er indoors started giving him GBH to the 'earole about having her garage back, he was almost ready to toss it out when a mad artist rode over the horizon to save him.

Thanks to the latter's contacts in the world of modern art and ability to come up with pretentious psychobabble to accompany it, they were able to flog it to Damien Hirst for a tidy sum (yes really). Correctly realising the correlation between money and old rope, they collaborated to produce a super-duper uber fuck-off Tesla coil which they were exhibiting in the Great Eastern last night.

So we rolled up to fill out the crowd a bit but there was really no need as it was packed with sallow, goatee-bearded artist types. The machine itself was mightily impressive, sparking away in a sort of Ghostbusters "don't cross the streams" effect, and brilliantly set in a Masonic ritual Greek temple-esque chamber, deep in the bowels of the hotel. Psychobabble was in full effect, my favourite being "One could consider it a super-neuron, disconnected from a gigantic brain, firing off into the darkness", and the artist types affected elegance and said things like "Even the valium doesn't kill the pain any more" [2].

Damien Hirst and Tracy Emin were in attendance, I am assured, although I wouldn't have recognised either of them unless they cut a sheep in half or threw their knickers at me. There was some debate as to whether we could convince Tracy Emin to "just stand here for a moment", thus simultaneously doing the world a great favour and doubling the asking price, but even without that it was an interesting change of surroundings for one night.

[1] Sausage and Mash, settle down ...

[2] Yes really, one of our number overheard this.

Two For The Good Guys

Hats off to Paul Alterman, 5th in the Bellagio $5K for $46K, and JP Kelly, 1st in the Luton £1500 for £45K or so. One old school player and one new, but both top players who understand how much more there is to poker than just the play of hands.

Bring Out The Gimp

If you have no money and even less self-respect, here's who to try to insinuate yourself with.

What would Jesus do, Daniel ? I think he would offer the guy double or nothing to drink the brine from a pickled egg jar don't you [1] ?

[1] I saw someone do this once it was fucking gross. Yes, just like Homer.

Smiert Spionam

Problems with my laptop came to a head today. After it blue-screened three times within an hour of trying to play online poker, I called the Blue Yonder helpline intending to bang the virtual desk and demand a new modem. Instead the guy asked me to run a couple of DOS utilities, one of which was netstat. He asked me how many lines starting "TCP" were output. When I said "about 100" I could almost hear him sucking his breath in through his teeth like a car mechanic. He said he'd never had anyone tell him more than 30 before.

I don't understand these things (if I can't see the code I don't want to know) but apparently these were all locations that my laptop was sending messages to. He recommended SpyBot to clear it out and that did indeed reduce the number of TCP outputs to zero. That didn't stop the blue-screening entirely but after some more tortuous fucking about with device manager I was able to force-feed it some newer USB drivers, and I cleared out as many cookies and cache files as I could and finally managed to download something I've been trying to download all weekend, which feels like some kind of achievement. Hopefully now I can play online again without thinking "make your fucking play before I blue screen" every time I'm dealt Aces.

Death (Metal) In Vegas

I have booked two weeks in the Orleans this July but very sadly I'm not going to be there in time for the Unholy Alliance Tour (sixth entry in the list).

Slayer in Vegas, that would rule. Do you think they'll pimp up their set Vegas-stylee ? I doubt it myself. It's probably for the best though. I'd only come out saying "This music today, it's got no tune. I remember if you went to see Testament or Corrosion Of Conformity you'd be guaranteed 90 minutes of toe-tapping and a good old singalong at the end. And you'd still have change from a tenner. Kids today".

Making It Big

There's only one person I was at university with who I have seen in the public eye anywhere since, apart from Ipswich and QPR legend Steve Palmer, but seeing as I never spoke to him and that's a fairly relaxed definition of "in the public eye" he probably doesn't count. No, the only one is Formula 1 Technical Director Mike Gascoyne. So much for all the others becoming MPs and so on. Although to be fair, half of them could have done and I wouldn't have noticed.

Anyway, I had to smile at this article, and this one where Mike compares himself to Jose Mourinho, because I really could picture him saying these things. He was never one to back down if he thought he was right either. I didn't realise he was on $6 million a year though. Maybe I should go on Friends Reunited and try to nip him.

By Reading This Sentence You Agree To Let Me Kick Your Teeth In

A day off today. Hard life. Oh it's going to be sweet when every day's a holiday. After donking off [1] 20K chips in the $10 Rebuy on Stars, I took the air for a constitutional, and nipped into Tesco's on my way back for some Snack-A-Jack's mini bites and low fat cheese. Prevention is better than cure. Anyway, on my way out I saw a sign reading "If you park in this car park for more than 2 hours you agree to paying a £70 charge".

Fuck off ! Don't tell me what I agree to. Even if I don't have a car. At least it's not my job to think up stuff like that.

[1] As I believe they say on the street. By the way, can anyone tell me where this "pwned" word comes from ? Pesky kids.

About 20 seconds later : fine, don't bother. Google is our friend :

A corruption of the word "Owned." This originated in an online game called Warcraft, where a map designer misspelled "owned." When the computer beat a player, it was supposed to say, so-and-so "has been owned." Instead, it said, so-and-so "has been pwned."

It basically means "to own" or to be dominated by an opponent or situation, especially by some god-like or computer-like force.

"Man, I rock at my job, but I still got a bad evaluation. I was pwned."

OR

"That team totally pwned us."