The best thing I did for myself today...

...was turning off the television. Taking this simple step has enriched my day in a way I totally didn't expect, but should have. Television is an incredible timesuck for me. I seem to arrive at this conclusion from time to time, but the lesson seldom lasts. I woke up this morning unusually early (for me), and the first thing I did after getting some coffee was sit down on the couch and click on the TV. This may surprise you, but I couldn't find a damn thing I thought of as really engaging to watch early on a Saturday morning, so after about an hour of the Three Stooges and some time wasted on part of a Married...with Children marathon, I decided, "Fuck this!" and I turned the damn thing off. Since then, I've spent most of my day on that other, much more productive, time-wasting love of my life, the Internet.

I find the Internet superior to television in just about every respect. I can move it at whatever pace I like, and the content there, owing to the immeasurably greater breadth of selection, offers me much more that I find to my liking, rather than merely acceptable. While, from the outside perspective, the Internet may seem like an equally unproductive activity as watching reruns on the idiot box, internally it is much more pleasing, even satisfying, and that is what counts in my hedonistic world. So there.

I did more catching up on LJ, which is something I should really be doing on a more frequent basis, and I also did some more staring at my e-mail inbox, which is again accumulating a dangerous amount of backlog. I eventually decided that now was not the best time to try and tackle e-mail, so I thought I'd try to cobble an LJ post together and clean my queue out a little bit. Lucky you. :)

Okay...I'm going to sprinkle the lj-cuts liberally. This is a long post. :)

( News from South Jersey )

( News from the Poker Table )

Bobby the Worm's Poker Corner
This is a hand from last night's session (which, by the way, was brief but pretty profitable, considering). There's nothing super-remarkable about this hand, except that it ends in a heartbreak, and it illustrates an interesting point about good players and great players.

( The bulk of the Poker Corner... )

So there you have it. Like I said, not a remarkable hand, and not even so much of a bad beat story (after that turn fell, he had eleven outs to beat me, and even if he didn't match, he still had nine). It does illustrate one of those situations that separates the men from the boys, as it were...the good players from the expert players, and it's pretty telling that I took the weak option. If anyone has feedback to offer, especially on the analysis, I'm all ears.

While I'm on the topic, actually, I've been thinking that I should set up a separate blog for poker stuff, just to weed out these long-winded recaps for those who aren't interested. Stay tuned for further developments.

( News from Around LJ )

Last, but not least, aylack made this post semi-recently about cinquentas, or fifty-word stories. I was so intrigued that I took a crack at it, myself. The results are below, but be forewarned that I apparently had a bit of despair in my heart that night. :)

( "Helpless" )

Man. I'm sure that made more sense at the time. Oh, well. :)

Okay, it's getting late, this is already one whopper of a post, and I actually have something to do tomorrow. Consider this Catchup Post Part I. In the next installment: some gaming stuff, some found philosophy, and maybe more! Until then, dear readers, peace out.