congratulations leslie

sure, other distinctions exist, but do any really outweigh being the first artist listed on my audible list twice? i reckon nay.

last night as i surfed the internet, i decided to steal her new album (temporarily, i'll buy it when it comes out). technically, it's not even released and won't be until may 1 stateside. but that has no bearing on it being available on various p2p sites, my preferred one being soulseek. and just as i suspected, a slew of individuals had already posted it on the network.

so this morning as i sauntered down to the muni station, i took a listen. my first thought was negative: god damn it, these stupid white earbuds that come with ipods suck. they perfectly reproduce what the music would sound like if your studio were a tunnel on a winter day in chicago.

but as soon as i got over that fact, her songs absorbed me. unlike her previous (and also great) album let it die, these songs all come from feist herself -- with the exception of one nina simone cover. and she displays true variety, varying the pace from the bright and danceable i feel it all to the sultry and bass-laden my moon my man all the way down to the melancholy and contemplative the water. mix this with the sexiest voice in the biz and, well, there's not much else to say except that feist has about three weeks left before achieving international pop stardom.

oh, and that first listen has turned into half a dozen going on seven.

you're short? better work hard

i don't think it's much of a secret that women prefer taller men. but now it's been quantified just how much they prefer them. and the news isn't so good for me.

apparently, the average annual income for a man in the united states is $62,500. i make more than that, but not $150,000 more, which is what i'd have to do to offset my disadvantage versus an identically-qualified six-foot version of myself according to a study done on the preferences of men and women using matchmaking services. read about it in john tierney's article in the nyt.

fortunately, i have my sterling good looks, incisive wit, and impeccable taste to fall back on. that's got to be worth, oh let's say two inches. now where am i going to find the other $50,000? hehe.

my three month checkup

here's what i pledged to do for 2007. let's see how i'm doing.

* stop biting my nails
a rousing success, though one slightly marred by the replacement of one bad habit with another questionable one. kind of like people who quit smoking and get fat, i've quit biting my nails and have started filing them with a four-surface emory board (though i only use two, no buffing for me!)

* dinner party once a month (starting february)
only failure to report. i began the year at zero, and remain there.

* cook one real meal per week (multiple pots and courses)
a mixed bag. i've cooked several real meals, but nothing that i would consider impressive. i continue to disappoint myself by the way i cook. still, my goal here was partly economic, and i've probably saved something.

* one month cycle
failure!

* stay with the gym (add ten pounds of muscle and lose five pounds of fat)
i'm pretty sure i've added ten pounds. unfortunately, it's not all muscle. just reupped at the gym though. of course paying's the easy part, now i have to start going.

* 20k invested
i've modified this goal to having 50k across all my investment vehicles. that includes two 401k accounts from old jobs, a brokerage account, and an online savings account. with the $4000 of excelsior funds i just purchased, that brings me to ~ $30k. since i started the year with around 20k, that puts me roughly on schedule.

* 2 international trips
well i'm still at zero, but i think there's a reasonable chance i could get to four if i include work trips. ireland for my birthday, southern europe for new year's, and then montreal and manila for work.

* remember how much i like my friends (keeping in touch, visiting, gifts)
i've found it offputting to give gifts to friends. so far i've purchased two of them, and delivered one after a long deliberation. this may just be me being me, but there's always something to feel weird about. if she is single -- or even worse if she's not -- will she misinterpret it as a play? if the friend is a he, well, guys exchanging gifts is just weird, right? i have a gift sitting at my house and am actually waiting for a reason to give it. of course, this kinda defeats the purpose of random gift-giving, which is what i set out to do.

* keep chin high (six days so far)
haven't been able to sustain this, and have tried to replace it by keeping myself busy. i've taken freelance assignments so that i wouldn't have to sit and think about things i shouldn't be thinking about. and when there have been other free moments, i'll play cards. hell, if you're not going to be happy now, at least set aside something for the future when you might. well at least that's my thought process.

honestly, it's been a tough year, and nothing close to what i had envisioned at the beginning. i feel like i've done some good things, but it still feels like i'm coming up short. i guess the silver lining's that i still have nine months to correct that.

illegible

a couple weeks ago, i added a sidebar to my blog called legible, where i could list all the things i read that truly moved, relaxed, fascinated, uplifted, or inspired me. i am a bit afraid everything is going to come from the new yorker and ny times -- more or less the required reading for anyone who considers themselves informed -- but hopefully that will motivate me to broaden my reading habits.

normally, they make terrific diversions, enriching my time on a crowded streetcar or breaking up a monotonous work day of writing sop documents for our customer support team. but today, the times failed. failed miserably.

starting as i often do in the most emailed box, i clicked on the most written about story, For Girls, It’s Be Yourself, and Be Perfect, Too.

it's long, especially for a newspaper article. it requires you to click six times to reach the end, and the only thing that got me through it was the knowledge that i was going to rail about it on my blog.

basically, it's a woe is me piece about rich girls, who have to balance being rich and the rigors of making sure that they're going to stay that way. yes, the horror of having to take honors and ap classes so they can go to the ivy league school that their parents are alma maters of, all while trying to be pretty.

yes, i understand college is competitive these days. but my sympathy doesn't extend to crying adolescents who didn't make the grade for williams and will have to settle for smith. and call me a snob, but when i read about the huge sigh of relief that came when one student received her acceptance letter from usc (who knew the university of spoiled children had those? i always assumed parents just sent in the first semester's tuition with the "application".), what little credibility that had survived for the first five pages of the story instantly vanished.

so to the "amazing girls" of newton high, i say good luck.

not that you'll need it, since you're rich already.

everybody loves (long) blondes

normally when i travel, i travel to eat. but with a tentative plan to head over to the uk at the beginning of july, i decided to see if my current favorite band happened to be playing somewhere on the island. as it turns out they're on the summer festival circuit with stops at oxegen and t in the park. too bad they're sold out (three months in advance?), which means the only times they'll be within a 5000 mile radius of my location in the foreseeable future will pass me by.

i love the long blondes album, somewhere to drive you home, and basically loop it on my ipod. and to the detriment of my connectedness to the world, their cd has replaced npr as my automobile listening. in fact, i'm so enamored with their music, that i've developed a crush on lead singer kate jackson, despite not finding her remotely attractive physically. kinda like feist (though she's still #1).

and the axe fell

today reminded me of those gloomy days at the tail end of the dot-com era, morale dropping to a seemingly impossible low after a few more people said their goodbyes. these days played a significant role in why i left the uncorporate corporate world of the startup.

so it saddened me, though i knew it was happening, that a couple people were asked to stop showing up. one person, i consider a friend, albeit not a close one. not much of a worker, but a pleasant fellow. the office will be a bit more somber in his absence. the other, i have little fondness for. he hasn't taken particularly well to my delegations of responsibility and a sense of resentment emanated from him constantly. still, i don't wish joblessness on him either, especially after hearing that he splits time between his sister's and a friend's couch already.

all that said, the layoffs were deserved, and for that matter, tardy. i'll be taking over their duties, which look to be minimal. and i guess i should feel good that i negotiated them a modest severance package, two weeks paid notice and delayed their dismissal for a week. from what i've heard about the man above, none of those things would have happened normally.

but it still doesn't make me all that much happier. those looks of resignation on their faces as they were called into the one-on-ones, understanding their inevitable fate -- they're difficult to forget.

time to drink it off.

feng shui me

i spent a day out of the office this week in order to interview some people for a piece i'm writing on a peer coaching program they've launched at the haas business school. and upon my return the next day, i discovered several bulbous objects hanging from the exposed piping that runs along the ceiling. intrigued, i crept up close to inspect these hanging oddities which resemble a headless snowman.

i flicked one with my finger and it reacted much like a ping-pong ball might, flying away quickly and emitting an unsatisfying and hollow tapping sound. "we had a feng shui guy come in yesterday," my coworker said.

"you're full of shit," i replied instinctively, thinking that a company this far in the red could not afford to spend money on such new age gobbledygook.

but indeed, my coworker told the truth. the hanging objects were gourds and had been strategically placed around the office in order to improve the energy, or flow, or some other descriptor normally associated with yoga. apparently, a red welcome mat has been placed at the door as well. obviously, another key component of achieving whatever it is that feng shui sets out to achieve.

i'm no expert on feng shui, so i do have one question about it: how much did it cost us?

a strange thing about ms word

as a sometimes freelancer, i've become accustomed to using the word count feature of ms word. since i'm always writing on word count, it's the last thing i do before saving the file and submitting it to my editor.

here's what i've noticed though. there's (at least) two ways to do a word count in ms word, and they consistently give you different results. using the word count feature in the tools menu on the profile i'm writing about the founders of a nice little company called revolution foods, i get a count of 418 words. on the other hand, according to the readability statistics feature (which i use to make sure i'm not using the passive voice excessively, 10% is the acceptable limit in my book) the count is 415 words.

in the whole scheme of things, this clearly doesn't mean shit, but as a former computer scientist this bothers me. why would you use two different routines to accomplish the same task? after all, even if you chose the one that calculated the result wrong, i wouldn't have noticed.

by the way, i have to get down to 400. i'm close, but finding words to excise has become real difficult. not surprising considering i started at 625 (or was it 628?).

absence makes the heart grow fond

correction: chef paul bertolli is no longer affiliated with oliveto. bad (i should say no) fact checking on my part. he is the founder and curemaster for a company called fra' mani salami, whose products i shall be trying with all due expedience. paul canales, previously the chef de cuisine for oliveto, has taken over as oliveto's chef.

i considered the idea as i sat down in the cafe area of oliveto, rockridge's renowned italian restaurant.

nearly ten years ago, as a starving college student, i had dined in the restaurant, sitting just two tables away from where i sat now. i can't recall the faces who crowded around the small square table that evening, but i do remember the incessant complaining. their main gripe, and a common one for people that age, accustomed to the mammoth portions at culinary meccas such as tgi fridays and bennigan's, was that serving sizes were too small.

now let me be clear. the portions were small, primarily because the pasta dishes we ordered weren't intended as entrees. the meal had been set up in the traditional, and frankly, far superior (i understand that now), manner, where pasta is but a small dish bookended by the antipasti and main.

but the portions weren't just small, they were heavenly. as i consumed the last bite, i was awestruck: pasta never tasted like this before. and to be honest, it never has since. chef paul bertolli makes all his pasta on the premises and does it better than anyone else. it's a bold statement and one that i stand by.

oliveto was my first great meal, the one that i look back upon as the turning point in how i viewed eating. it was no longer just an activity, it was an experience, and a visceral and sensual one at that.

as the years passed though, i wondered. was oliveto's greatness a product of the dismal food i had experienced up to that point? would it still tantalize me, after a decade of dining at some of the world's finest restaurants?

yes.

for starters, my two dining companions and i split the salami plate. like the pasta, all the salami served at the restaurant are created by the chef. once again, it shows. all five varieties shine, with the soppressata particularly memorable.

the real test was yet to arrive though. the pasta had its previous greatness, as well as ten years of absence, to live up to, but sailed well beyond my expectations. the tagliatelle, a wide flat noodle, was served in a light sauce, with the flavor supplied by shaved fish eggs. the dish captured the best qualities of food, even ones that would seem to contradict. subtle, yet somehow rich. simple, yet unlike any other pasta i had come across.

in fact, all that held the meal short of greatness was the lack of a dessert to cap the meal. not the restaurant's fault, of course, but simply because my dining companion (and ride back to sf) needed to depart.

in hindsight, however, should i have just taken bart?

the shins must read my blog

since they heeded my call for a trip to the bay area. they'll be stopping at the warfield on the 16th and 17th of the coming month.

i won't be going though. not because i hold a grudge, but becuase i don't think much of their latest album, wincing the night away. song two, australia, however may be their single-best song yet. that's saying something.

performance update

a bit of time has passed and my little sony vaio has been chugging away over the past couple of weeks datamining hands from full tilt. since my first update, the number of hands in my db has more than tripled and now numbers more than three-quarters of a million hands.

from an absolute standpoint, i haven't had a lot of luck recently and my actual win rate per hand has dropped more than 10%. but with this more statistically relevant sample of data, let's see how i fare relatively to my competition.

> 100 hands played: 1814 0f 5377, 66th percentile
> 1000 hands played: 263 of 736, 64th percentile
> 2500 hands played: 80 of 266, 70th percentile
> 5000 hands played: 29 of 114, 74th percentile
> 10,000 hands played: 8 of 30, 73rd percentile

what i find interesting about these numbers is that my relative rank rises as the minimum-hand requirement increases even though the percentage of winning players in the group grows as well -- at 100 hands played 59% of the players are losers; at 10,000 hands played 83% are winners.

$200 and a sprained wrist

for two years, i avoided the slopes. after a six months in lake tahoe, my daily routine consisiting of strapping into a snowboard and riding the chairlift, the snow-capped mountains lost some of their allure.

at least that was my story when people asked.

it was only partly true.

yes, i no longer possessed the motivation of a few years back, when i would wake at 4:30 a.m. call in sick from my car on interstate 80 as i sped towards the hill. but equally responsible for my absence, i didn't relish the idea of sucking. not compared to the average winter warrior, but relative to myself. and with each passing day, i knew i'd drifted a step further from my prime.

it started the following year. i met a bunch of friends i'd worked with at the resort for a week of boarding. they had spent the past season in telluride. i recovered from a car accident then wrote film reviews for a website in san francisco. and it was pretty obvious.

by the end of the first day, they ahd showed off numerous aerial maneuvers and hazardous rail slides. all i had to show were a pair of tired legs that could barely keep myself upright during a high-speed heel side turn. my friends, who i had matched spin for spin less than a year ago, were now a completely different class of rider.

so i stayed away.

but i did miss it sometimes -- the liberation that comes from floating two stories above the ground as you clear a 40-foot tabletop jump and the coarse swoosh that accompanies a carved toe-side turn. so after some prodding from a friend, i relented, and accepted an invitation for some president's day boarding.

the evening before, as i dusted off my snowboarding bag and unzipped it to make sure all my equipment still resided inside, my mood suddenly elevated. perhaps, all the skill would rush back, i thought to myself. buoyed by this unexpected elation, i began imagining, then acting out, the impressive spins i would toss as i sped down the hill. the glory days of my 24th year, when i cruised into the terrain park and threw a switch five and built a ramp taller than myself on the hill in back of my house to huck inverted spins, would all be revisited tomorrow. sure there would be signs of rust. i wouldn't be quite the same caliber rider -- it would be foolish to expect that after so long away -- but the magic would start to show a bit more with each passing run.

the day's beginning seemed auspcious. the first run was shaky, but each moment on my board increased my comfort level, and after 90 minutes i felt poised to make the previous night's visualizations reality.

half an hour later, i didn't hit the wall, i hit a building. the legs turned to jello and my only motivation for turning was to balance the pain between two different muscle groups. a lunch break didn't help. neither did taking a run off. and finally, as if there hadn't been sufficient disappointment already, i took a nasty tumble on a large patch of ice on the day's last run, -- literally five feet from the parking lot -- and sprained my wrist.

so that's what i have to show for my glorous return to winter sports. $56 for a lift ticket , $35 for gas and rental car, and $15 for a dessicated slab of tri-tip and two bottles of water. quite the aching muscles today as well, for which i'll be spending $90 for a massage on thursday to try and alleviate.

sure was fun though. no joke.

and the grammy goes to...nobody gives a shit

to my surprise this morning while reading the ny times, the grammys took place yesterday. now i talk a lot of shit about the oscars, but at least they have some credibility. the grammys, well they rank somewhere behind the academy, golden globes, independent spirit awards, top ten lists from notable critics, tonys, emmys...well, you get the idea.

ah, but you say, what evidence do you have to substantiate your view? and i say, the winner of the pop performance by a duo or group with a vocal, my humps by the black eyed peas.

ironically, despite being one of the ten worst songs ever forced upon human ears (hopefully dogs with their higher listening frequencies are spared), a cogent argument could be made that it is only the third worst song fergie has been involved with (fergielicious and london bridge were inexplicably shut out).

My hump, my hump, my hump, my hump,
My hump, my hump, my hump, my hump, my hump, my hump.
My lovely lady lumps (lumps)
My lovely lady lumps (lumps)
My lovely lady lumps (lumps)
In the back and in the front (lumps)
My lovin' got you

without context, i might confuse this for the work of a retard with a serious stutter. but hey, i guess that's why i'm not a judge.

finally, some housekeeping. is this not the worst fucking name for an award ever concocted. i lose interest in hearing the winner before the announcer gets through the title. should any award really include two prepositional phrases? would the grammy nominating board be unsure if they could nominate a duo if the award were renamed best vocal performance by a pop group (maybe since the nominees were obviously chosen by those with sparse brain activity)?

perhaps, the people who named the award also chose the winner of it.

fuck the shins

living in palo for a year, i missed the easy access to shows in san francisco more than just about anything else.

well at least i thought.

turns out, san francisco gets skipped over more often than it should. now, the shins have blown up, despite their most recent album being their weakest by many orders of magnitude (song 2, australia, however, is one of their five best songs). yet in their previous pass through the bay area, the closest they came to san francisco was santa cruz. and now, they're shunning the bay area enitrely, opting for stops in seattle (twice), portland and los angeles as their big west coast stops.

what the fuck?

man rule

never go to a strip club without lining something up for after

frankly, i've never understood the appeal. they're expensive, and worse, provide little hope of an interesting end to the evening.

yet, i seem to be the minority in this position. a group ventures out for a big night, and when some start to lag, a suggestion is made for a trip to the titty bar, generally to the ovation of others. as if this somehow turns to the night into a rousing success.

i found myself at a bar. saturday night, so no surprise. but the group was not a regular one. obligation lead me, as this was a sendoff of sorts to an old friend moving out of the bay area. revelry was to ensue.

but to my chagrin, only two shots were purchased (one fernet for me, one fernet for him). and without the contribution of others the night spiraled downward, first to mediocrity, then twenty minutes later, to abject boredom (* i was having an on night, hence i entertained, but reciprocation, absent).

i prodded the guest of honor, putting him in postion for a free drink from our six-foot blonde bartender recently transported from seattle. he declined. she offered water instead. he accepted.

"i'm such a bad bartender," she said. "i'm supposed to be selling drinks."

uh, yeah. dance on the bar. get us drunk. something to make my trek through the sheets of rain falling on san francisco worthwhile.

and then the inevitable. one person called it a night. like dominoes in a row, others announced their fall. i resisted, saying no going away party should be ending at 12:30 a.m. the word club was tossed out. my heart sank. then the words gold club. my heart sank a bit further.

so there i was, sitting three rows back from the stage, debating whether i needed a seven dollar pint of bud light to make this bearable. i handed a stack of ones to my friend and he moved toward the stage area. a few mediocre talents took their turns on stage, shed their tops, scaled the silver pole in the center of the stage, then rotated their bodies around the pole till gravity returned them to the floor. (side note, do strip clubs have poles for phallic reasons or just to show off the artistic ability of their employees?)

for their efforts, a gaggle of onlookers stuffed their g-strings with dollar bills.

but really, where does the enjoyment coming from? i've never used the services of a professional woman, but at least i understand the draw. strippers, that's like paying thomas keller to cook a meal, then leaving before your first bite. at least, no one's stupid enough to do that.

now you know

few things in life can really be measured.

that's probably a good thing. for chances are, there would be a lot of damaged egos if the truth came out. everyone secretly thinks they're a top dog. and the ones that don't you never see anyways. they're depressed, holed up in their parent's basement with the light switch down.

but there are exceptions. one of the world's leading researchers in video game culture once told me world of warcraft -- just look at the level of your character -- and a big reason why people loved the game so much. poker's another.

using a piece of software called poker tracker you can record nearly fifty thousand hands a day. it's remarkable, really. run a few simple arithmetic calculations and there you have it, the wheat separated from the chaff -- and which one you are.

so here it is, my rank after almost 200,000 (35,000 of which i played) hands of $200 buyin no limit.

all players: 2295 out of 6927, 66th percentile
players with at least 100 hands: 621 out of 1854, 66th percentile
players with at least 500 hands: 121 out of 395, 69th percentile
players with at least 1000 hands: 58 out of 186, 68th percentile
players with at least 2000 hands: 14 out of 58, 76th percentile

since i'm a statistics retard, i don't know which is the most meaningful sample. but the results look pretty conclusive to me.

apparently, i'm signficantly better than average, but well within one standard deviation of the mean. if this were an iq test, an equivalent score would be about 110.

ouch.

buy my friendship, it's cheap

i describe myself as selective about the people i keep company with, so i was shocked to find this to be true. once could be luck, twice could be coincidence, but three times? that's a pattern.

case 1: i strolled down to haight street to meet a friend at a local bookstore. for me, it was a pause before the bar. for her, she needed a book, not to read, but to give. she was headed to a birthday party at a bar. someone she knew, but not a resident of the inner circle.

like any normal person, i've been to many birthday parties for acquaintances where a group of friends meet at a bar. and in all those times, i've always given the honored guest the same gift: liquor. usually in a shot glass.

so i wondered silently. how would i feel if a young lady i didn't expect a gift from came bearing one? i'd think of her much more highly, that's for certain. even if i didn't like the gift.

cost -- $12.95(?) for a compilation of essays and critiques on music.

case 2: while washing my hands at a friend's house, i suddenly found myself rapt by a romantic scent that filled the air. it was soft and sweet and recalled those moments when a waft of air escaped from a bakery while you passed by.

i sniffed the air several times, pausing briefly in between each inhalation to shift my head toward where the fragrance was strongest. it was my hands. or rather the soap i had used to wash them. mango and white sugar.

as i exited the bathroom, i simply commented "i love the soap in your bathroom". the next time i ventured to the apartment, i had a gift waiting for me. and i think ever more highly of that person with each wash of my hands (at least until the bottle runs out).

cost -- $10 (?) for a bottle of archipelago sugar hand wash.

case 3: in the cooking class i'm taking at city college, a classmate said he'd be missing class the coming week and asked if i could pick up an extra copy of the handouts. the following friday he emailed me asking when would be a convenient time to swing by and pick them up. and since i would be waiting for the cable guy to show from 6-8, i told him to just come by after work.

he did. and brought a creme puff to show his thanks. now ignoring the inherent awkwardness that ensues when one straight man brings another straight man a pastry, i was taken aback by the thoughtfulness of this person i barely knew. especially since my favor was no more than common courtesy.

cost -- $1.95 for a beard papa caramel creme puff.

in conclusion (i haven't used that prepositional phrase to start a paragraph since english class, sophmore year in high school), all it takes to win me over is a gift, small or big, as long as it's unannounced and unexpected.

it's the chocolate stupid

i had mixed feelings as a child when my mother used to return from the chinese grocery store. she always returned with goodies: pickled cucumbers, fried gluten, sticky rice, pork buns, egg custards, and sweet rice cakes.

but soy milk too.

invariably, when i saw her unload groceries, she'd pull a half gallon of soy milk out of those pink plastic bags and place it in the refrigerator. once in a while she'd tell me to drink some or without asking just bring me a glass of it. i'd anticipate a glass of fresh squeezed oj (out of the carton, but still good) then look down and find the translucent white liquid and realize how wrong i had been.

the dreaded beverage even made an appearance in a recurring nightmare of mine. now it wasn't on the level of my earthquake nightmare -- at least until high school, but probably till i moved to california, i thought people died in earthquakes by a crevasse opening up in the earth and them falling into the bottomless hole (i was never sure whether they plummeted all the way to the magma) . hey, that's how it happened in my dreams (i woke up before reaching the magma). no, the soymilk dream was more of a mild night terror. my mom would tell me to drink the soymilk and i'd refuse. she'd insist politely and i'd start pouting. then she'd get angry and start yelling. to my credit, i don't recall ever criying despite the verbal abuse. yes, i remained strong until waking in a cold sweat.

but this past week, having fallen sick and with my car in the shop, my only access to non-delivery food came from one of the local markets. and because i'd always thought it looked charming from the outside, i elected to try the natural food store, aptly named the natural food store. as i wandered through its narrow isles, i came upon the shelf displaying all varieties of soymilk. and as fate would have it, the vitasoy brand was discounted to just $1.99 for a quart.

the idea of giving soymilk another try began to rattle around inside my skull. well, i did like tofu quite a bit now, which i wasn't fond of as a child. and like soymilk, tofu also comes from the soybean. perhaps my soy tastebuds had changed from a hatred to a love during my transition from child to adult. so i pulled one of the rectangular cartons off the shelf and placed it in my blue shopping basket.

when i returned home, i was excited by my purchase. i let it chill in the refrigerator, then popped the plastic tab and poured myself half a mug. i took a sip and was shocked, not because it tasted terrible, not becuase it tasted good: because it tasted great. as i swished the liquid around my mouth and then swallowed, the beverage leaving behind a smooth memory of sweet cream, i wondered, could this really be the same thing that had disturbed my nights as a child?

but of course it wasn't the same. the box i had pulled off the shelf was chocolate soymilk. and when i returned the next evening to purchase another basketfull of groceries, the carton i pulled off was vanilla soymilk.

three days later, i ventured out again to fetch a carton of the delicous and healthy treat known as soymilk. but this time i elected for another market, one that did not carry the vitasoy brand. so instead i took home a carton of silk vanilla soymilk, this time in the half-gallon variety. as soon as i reached my home i pulled off the plastic tab and poured myself a hearty glass. i raised the cup to my lips, my mind already anticpating its delicious reward. with my mouth wrapped around the brim of the glass, i took a full gulp and then another. come sugary richness.

but it never arrived. i looked down into the glass for answers. i couldn't understand what had happened. i turned to the counter where the carton rested. i reread the copy on the box. it still said vanila. then i turned to the nutritional ingredients. there the answer lied. only 3.5g of sugar per serving in silk instead of the 7g in vitasoy. i could barely taste the vanilla and i didn't like it. and if i couldn't taste the chocolate i wouldn't like that either.

oh soymilk, i thought you a friend for life. but no, my old friends, chocolate, vanilla and sugar simply made you beautiful for those two blissful nights. at least i'll have them forever.

my car's hobson choice

i've always loved this term. apparently it refers to a stable owner thomas hobson who lived in the 16th century that made the following offer to his patrons. take the horse in the stall closest to the door or take no horse at all.

it's all about the illusion of free choice. technically, hobson gave his customers a choice. but if you're in a rush to deliver fresh ahi tuna to the trendy, new sushi joint and 100 miles from the closest town, not taking a horse isn't much of an option. over time, the meaning has expanded somewhat and now often refers to the choice of two bad options.

which brings us to my car, or as i like to call it, my retarded stepson (not related, but only a father could still love it). those who call themselves friends of mine know the laundry list of problems that i've had over our seven years together, the most notable being the subframe of the car detaching.

now i have a different problem: the headlights blink, but stop when the turn signal's on. so should i be an asshole and annoy the hell out of anyone with the misfortune of driving in front of me by continuing to flash them with my xenons or have them think i'm an idiot who always thinks his turn is coming up?

well it sounded cool at first

once in a while, i'll let someone in on my pseudo-secret. i've played cards as my job. then i show'em my rolex. that gets the maximum reaction. shows how baller i am.

just kidding of course -- not about playing cards for a living or having the rolex, just showing it off.

on those occasions i do tell, i always get a favorable reaction. simply put, playing cards seems cooler than what most people do. you can only have the following conversation so many times (1) before it grows tiresome:

me: what do you do?
boring person: i'm a lawyer/banker/trader/equity analyst.
me: you like it?
boring person: not really.
me: cool.

you don't meet a poker player every day and their interest becomes obvious when they say "really?", showing their shock that someone uncorporate might still cavort with the yuppies. this interest is a manifestation of their optimism: they might actually have a conversation that interests them.

i need 10 seconds to kill it.

invariably the second or third question in their line of inquiry goes "what makes you so good?". and if i had even a little stomach for pretentiousness, i'd say something like "i don't know. i guess i can just look into people's souls and find their fear." that would probably go over really well -- if i could keep from puking on myself after expelling that load of shit.

i've actually spent time trying to figure a good answer. i came up with this:

"you know, cards is no different than any other battle between two men. and no matter how strong someone is, if you keep pounding them over and over, sooner or later they break. they see you coming and they wince. (pause for effect) then they're yours."

now unless the woman (you know it's a woman becuase you wouldn't spend this much time chatting with someone of the same sex) is hiding a membership to gamblers anonymous, she'll have no idea what you are talking about. but who cares, that sounds hot and alpha. but again, puke. or at least some uncontrolled laughing about how ridiculous i sound.

so instead i say the truth. i'm not actually great. i have no special skill. unless you count not having an emotional breakdown at the table after taking a bad beat a special skill. it is unbelievable often people will give away their next three months of rent money while trying go kill bill on someone who caught a lucky card on them.

that's it. i've never been great at cards, and never will be. but i never suck either. and my good is usually just good enough.