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Digital Meandering


Twitterverse, Interweb, Digital Forest, InYourFaceBook . . . Most of the Luddites of my generation consider me an early adopter. And yet other than a page for the Matusow book, I have not as yet ventured into the time sink called FaceBook. Until today that is. I have sent out my first batch of friend invitations and will see where this goes. I figured since I am physically wandering from friend to friend on this current journey of mine, I might as well embark on a similar path in cyberspace. Also an olde acquaintance and internet critic showed me several long lost friends she had reconnected with via her short FB experiment, so I am now officially in your webface.


Twitter is a different attraction all together. The World Series of Poker was twitter infected this year with great success. For the non-poker infected among you, first I will acknowledge that my "no poker" content promise will take awhile to completely mature. So if you haven't surfed on yet, information from hundreds of poker tables is difficult and tedious to view and report on. But with a sizeable number of players twittering their own reports, the tournament coverage was much more accurate and up to date, at least for those players who were continually twittering. 

More interesting for me was the rumor control exercised by WSOP Commissioner Jeffery Pollack. The Commish (or Knish) put out over 700 twits during the Series and although most were PR and updates. He was able to comment on rumors in nearly real time. There is some surreal but inherent paranoia that leaks into a room of several thousand poker players and stomping out the first flames of ridiculous rumors gave this year's Series a more calm and less psychotic atmosphere. 

Osama and Obama should get twitter accounts--world peace 140 characters at a time.
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Goodbye Sonoma Hello San Francisco

I am in San Francisco now. I had to say goodbye to Sonoma in the title so I could use that really cool grape photo. After many too warm days in the north county, the fog was there this morning but I was on the way down to The City early. Of course there is complete overcast here in the Inner Sunset section of San Francisco where I am staying with Mira. I am hooked up to high speed interweb again and have a big black cat curled up beside me. So all is right in my world today.

Currently plans call for an extended stay of a week or more here. With lots of sideways visits to olde friends. My fiction work now has a working title; meaning I will never use this title but I have to call it something. So all references to the current fiction project will for now be labeled: Chautauqua in a Cube. Negotiations and conversations around a suitable non-fiction project continue.

Tomorrow, a sight for sore eyes.
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Windsor, CA.


I am currently in one of my favorite places in Sonoma county. Out on the ranch with Michael. One drawback: dial-up internet with shaky service at best. I won't even hook-up my laptop for fear of getting a ten year old virus.

The weather is warm, so we drove out to the ocean yesterday. Nearly forty degrees cooler at Goat Rock and then we took a spin up to Fort Ross and I got a cursory lesson in the Russian settlements in the 1840's.

This weekend there is an airshow buzzing over us, but the peace at the ranch will only be disturbed for a few hours each afternoon, and there are some very cool old planes drifting overhead. Barbeque for some of the usual suspects on Saturday evening and then I am off to San Francisco on Monday and some speedy net access. Amazing how much speed we need to communicate.

[Addendum: The brown fox kit in the picture was taken by Michael on the property this spring. For the barbeque gathering the clan of foxes put on quite a display. The kit, now mostly growth, hung out by the pond and napped under the cars while we awaited the arrival of the gang. After being scared off by the cars arriving, he came back out to everyone's delight. Then mom, dad and another yearling made an appearance in the field while we all sat around the fire pit. Quite a wild life show, with a jackrabbit and even a late night hunting owl or two.]
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Green Valley, CA.

I don't know what actually was the first stop on this current journey of mine. I suppose when I gave up the condo in Las Vegas back in January was as good a place to begin as any. But the plan then was to house-sit in Sonoma for three months and then to meander back to Las Vegas for the World Series. Mission accomplished. Then the story went that I would put down roots somewhere or at least pretend by putting my name on a lease. Well the best laid plans and all that...

Instead I am going to mooch and leech off of my cadre of friends and family for another four or five months until I actually decide where to settle or until I can think of another reason not to buy a sofa and just invade another group of friends. Truth be told, I really enjoy the intimacy of friendship over several days or even weeks. In addition, I will get to have some lengthy conversations with several of my potential co-authors on future projects. The new writing goals for the remainder of 2009 are to produce one complete book proposal, ready to submit to my agent and to have a first draft of my current fiction piece ready for my gaggle of critics to peruse. 

Right now I am at Matthew's in Green Valley, doing a short cat-sit. Matthew has a great collection of house and feral cats, who have adopted him and the GV place is very peaceful. One of my pet peeves is assumptive references, like mentioning a place that most people cannot place on a map. So geographically I will be a bit more detailed than just saying: "I am here" when here is not as well known as say San Francisco or Minneapolis.

Green Valley is an area (without zipcode) between Sebastopol and Forestville in Sonoma County. Sonoma is one of the renown wine valleys of Northern California. When you leave San Francisco across the Golden Gate bridge you enter first Marin and then Sonoma County. So for now I am about 60 miles north of SF in Green Valley focused on writing and packing a car for five months on the road. Will I need mittens?
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Neither Farewell, Nor Goodbye


This is my 200th blog post on this site since I began in January 2007. I thought I would use the mathematically significant milestone to announce a substantial change. With a couple of mild reservations overwhelmed by too much hard evidence -- I am getting out of poker.

For readers of this blog, who are mostly dedicated to the poker content, I thank you. You have been a great audience and I have been happy to entertain you with what I hope was a unique perspective on the world of poker. I will truly miss many of the players and staff I have come to know in the last five years. To the friends I have made in the poker media, well you know the state of our sad profession, no need to drag everyone through another litany that begins with the UIGEA and the corporate gagging of the game.

I am not shutting down the blog, in fact, I am revitalizing the content and will be writing nearly as much as I have over the last several months but with little or no poker content. I humbly invite any and all of you to continue logging in. I have two, maybe three, new writing projects going and I will be sharing progress on those with you. I am also beginning phase two of my non-domiciled travels, which I have now extended until at least the end of '09.

In laying poker aside, I am also putting the Poker Shrink to rest. But that nagging, clinical, at times insightful persona will still be around, for now let's just call him -- The Shrink. So not goodbye at all, just a shift in perspective, content and focus. I welcome all of you to Keeping Your Head in All the Games 2.0
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Momentarily Memorable Books

[Content Disclosure: Books and more books]

Otis got me going with his list of books that for whatever reason stand out in your mind. That category caveat makes it much easier to make a book list. You don't have to pick your favorites or even your ten best or most influential. This is just a list of books that stand out in my mind, books that made some kind of impression when I read them. They don't have to be classics, they don't even have to be books I would like to read again or read at all in my 2009 incarnation. But when I did have them in my hands and in my head, they left their mark. I think I am going to guesstimate the years I read them and perhaps annotate a bit.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintainence, Robert Prisig (I read this one in 1976). I think a lot of males in their 30's to 70's remember this book. Most of us remember it as a literary chautuaqua and for me a motivation to currently be writing my own story wrapped around a journey.

1984 George Orwell (read 1964). I have said before, this was the first book that I stayed up all night to read.

Words of My Perfect Teacher, Patrul Rinpoche (read 1997). A step on my buddhist path.

Politics Among Nations, Hans Morgentheau (read 1969). Part of my political science path.

The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli (read summer 1966). More of that political path and perhaps a bit of philosopical awakening too. Interesting (at least to me) I read Melville's Moby Dick in that same summer of 1966, it was not then memorable and I have never been able to read it again, though I have tried

Things Fall Apart, Chinaua Achebe (read 1967). Part of yet another path

Memories, Dreams and Reflections, C. G. Jung (read 1993). There are certainly more interesting works by Jung, like this collected works, but this is the one that opened my eyes to him

Catch-22, Joseph Heller (read 1966). Reading this while becoming radicalized by Vietnam was a truly out of mind experience

The Essential Rumi, Jalil al-Din Rumi and Coleman Barks. (read 1992). I don't actually know if this was the first Rumi I read, but it's a good place to start

The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake, (read 1975). I know this was not the first collection I read by William Blake, but I am sure of the year and the place and the effect that Blake had and has on me.

Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert Heinlein (read 1972). When Lee discovered I had not had my "sci-fi" period yet--he gave me this book, along with Dune, Moon is a Harsh Mistress and several others. After a year of intense science fiction reading I came to

Lord of the Rings, (read 1973), and several times since. Particularly interesting was the '99 reread with Linda.

Burmese Supernaturalism, Melford Spiro (read 1996). A far reaching encounter on both an academic and mystical level.

Silent Spring, Rachel Carson (1969). Just because.

Red Mars Green Mars Blue Mars, Kim Stanley Robinson (2003) How to tell a story with multiple voices.
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Capitalism Begets Socialism


Imagine the average wage a bit higher and the average intelligence a bit lower but other than that this bit of dialog from Forty Signs of Rain by Kim Stanley Robinson caught my attention this morning while I spent 2.78 hours at the Nevada DMV. Speaking of which--you know if you change the address on your driver's license and you get a sticker to put on the back with the new address. Then some time in the future you wish to change it back to the address that is already on the license, well that cannot be fathomed by the computer mediated system. I fear I no longer exist in the Silver State, but I am registered to vote in Neverland.


But back to capitalism, socialism and other fantasies:

"The average surplus value created by American workers is thirty-three dollars an hour."

Anna said: "I wonder how they define surplus value."

"Profit," Frank said.

Edgardo shook his head. "You can cook the books and get rid of profit, but the surplus value, the value created beyond the pay for labor, is still there."

Anna said, "There was a page in here that said the average American worker puts in 1,950 hours a year. I thought that was questionable too, that's forty hours a week for about forty-nine weeks."
. . .

"What's the average income?" Edgardo asked. "Thirty thousand?"

"Maybe less," Frank said.

"Call it thirty, and what's the average taxes paid?"

"About ten? Or is it less?"

Edgardo said, "Call it ten. So let's see. You work every day of the year, except for three lousy weeks. You create around a hundred thousand dollars. Your boss takes two thirds, and give you one third, and you give a third of that to the government. Your government uses what it takes to build all the roads and schools and police and pensions, and you boss takes his share and buys a mansion on an island somewhere. So naturally you complain about your bloated inefficient Big Brother of a government, and you always vote for the pro-owner party."

He grinned at Frank and Anna. "How stupid is that?"

I know. Too simplistic, the bosses take all the risks. Socialism doesn't work; Capitalism does (see Federal Financial Institutions Bailout, Sept. 2008). Be kind, I was into my third hour at the DMV, the man next to me was reading Super System II.
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