Be dumb, but at least be free

I'm extra wound-up and grumpy this morning, with really no idea why. I'm going to head out for a walk and run some errands and crap, so maybe that will clear my head. For now, I'd like to share some words of wisdom from a legendary figure from the old-school gambling scene, Jack Binion. This is from the book The Biggest Game in Town by A. Alvarez.

"If you go broke here in America, you don't really starve to death. From the financial point of view, there is a far greater difference between you and some poor native in Africa than there is between you and the richest man in the world. We all eat much the same food and sleep on the same brand of matress as the Hunt brothers down there in Dallas. This shirt of mine is one hundred percent cotton, and that's all Bunker Hunt is going to be able to wear. So maybe he can take a private jet while I have to stay home. But that's no big deal. Once you reach the lower middle class in the United States, there is no great difference between the top and the bottom. Here at the Horseshoe, if these guys go broke they are going to have to play cheaper. That's the only difference."

"Cheaper?" I said. "There are fortunes changing hands every day."

Binion shook his head. He seemed disappointed in me. We had appeared to be understanding each other, but now, as though for the first time, he registered my English accent and realized that, after all, I was just another uncomprehending foreigner. "In the free enterprise system, you have to assume that each guy is the best judge of what he does with his own money," he explained patiently. "I've often thought, If I got really hungry for a good milk shake, how much would I pay for one? People will pay a hundred dollars for a bottle of wine; to me that's not worth it. But I'm not going to say it is foolish or wrong to spend that kind of money, if that is what you want. So if a guy wants to bet twenty or thirty thousand dollars in a poker game, that is his privilege. Society might consider it bad judgment, but if that is what he wants to do, you can't fault him for it. That's America."

It's worth it just for the visual

Okay, so...there's this old British tradition...

Dude, forget it, I'm not even going to explain. All you need to know is in the following four words: Church full of clowns. God I want a picture so bad.

Okay, so...I couldn't find anything about the actual event in London. But something similar took place in New York just last year.

( Gaze upon it )