It is far easier to change the past from the future than it is to change the future from the past.
Sunday, September 10, 2006
How 9/11 could have been prevented (and how to prevent an airline terrorist attack from ever happening again)
Tonight ABC is going to be starting their two-part miniseries The Path to 9/11, which you probably heard is supposed to not reflect all that well on the Clinton Administration in the years leading up to the attack. So Bill Clinton and a lot of Democrats are trying to force ABC to not air the thing at all. This of course is being attacked by the Republicans... who not that long ago were trying (and succeeded) to get CBS to not run a miniseries about Ronald Reagan. I could point out the hypocrisy of the entire situation - regarding everyone involved - but I know now that it would only be an exercise in futility.
So tomorrow is the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks. I'll probably make a "retrospective" post sometime during the day to reflect on where I was, how I heard about it, the moment the towers collapsed that are eerily recorded in an AOL Instant Messenger conversation between a friend and myself... what a lot of people will probably be doing tomorrow in their own ways.
But right now, I want to talk about something that's been on my mind a lot the past few days: how the 9/11 attacks could have really been stopped from happening at all... and how we could prevent such an attack from ever happening again, if we want it bad enough.
Here's the crux of the problem as I see it, and it's only gotten worse since 9/11: we are too damned dependent on the government to protect us from even the slightest threats. Somewhere along the way we forgot that we are Americans... and that means we're supposed to look after ourselves and each other, without begging Big Brother to do it for us.
Let us be candid: gone are the days when FDR told us that "We have nothing to fear but fear itself." But in the time since 9/11 the refrain has become "Be in fear because they are out to get you!!" The biggest mistake we as Americans made in the days following the attacks was to let the federal government dictate the conditions of our anger and our response to that anger. We let this government - led by a very small man who is a narcissistic exploiter of tragedy - define our identity, instead of it being We The People who determine that for ourselves. The true American response would have been to resolve to punish those who did this to the utmost of our ability and to make a solemn vow that the criminals who did would not, could not, make us change one iota of who we are and how we live.
But that didn't happen. And I've said it before but I'll say it again: Osama Bin Laden won on 9/11, because he made America choose on its own that it would not be the nation its forefathers had built it to be. The America I grew up reading about in history books didn't spy on its own citizens, or harass children and elderly people at airports, or impede travel without "proper papers", or a lot of other things that were only supposed to happen on the other side of the Iron Curtain. Yes, we have freedom of speech and I have liberty to write these words... but once a nation begins to slide even the slightest down the path of fascism, it is very hard indeed for those freedoms to persist indefinitely.
So now you know that I believe that the federal government - led by this presidential administration - has used 9/11 to gradually strip away our liberties. We didn't have to let that happen if we had refused - with force if necessary - to let it exploit this tragedy to cower us even more than Osama did when the planes hit that morning.
The short of it being: we have to stop looking to the federal government to protect us at all. Hell, it can't even secure our border with Mexico... why should we take it at its word that it's going to keep another terrorist attack from happening again?
No, don't look to the federal government. Definitely don't look to the George W. Bush, who has done little else but sell us out since the day he came to Washington.
Look to yourselves instead. The first line of defense in this country isn't its armies or navies or air forces... it's you.
So you want to know how we could have prevented 9/11, and how we can make sure this never, ever happens again? It's really very simple...
Start letting civilians carry firearms on commercial airlines.
Ask yourself this: would Mohammed Atta and the rest of the 9/11 hijackers have been able to overtake a single plane had even one responsible passenger been onboard with a gun? Would they have even considered going through with their suicide missions if it crossed their minds that there might possibly be several armed passengers aboard their intended flights? Certainly the 9/11 hijackers were crazy... but I doubt they would be so insane as to not take that into consideration had there been the slightest threat of retaliation if they tried to pull it off once in the air.
Here's the plan: as a strong believer in the Second Amendment, I hold that the right to bear arms is the most important right we have, because if all else fails it is left to us - in writing, even - to settle what is right by armed might. But I do not believe that just anybody should be allowed to bring a gun aboard a commercial airliner.
So I propose allowing civilians who have proved they are responsible individuals to become licensed as "citizen marshals". Such persons will not be affiliated with any law enforcement agency or the government at all. Being appointed "citizen marshals" merely means that they have no outstanding criminal record, that they possess qualities of good character and are otherwise sound and considerate human beings. Being a citizen marshal would be an unpaid position... but then, anyone wanting to be such a marshal for the right reasons would not want any financial compensation anyway.
Citizen marshals would be the only regular civilians who would be allowed to board commercial passenger planes with a firearm, and adequate ammunition. They could even be given a special badge that designates their status for all to see. Ideally, there would be more than one citizen marshal - with guns - aboard each flight.
The thought of becoming a citizen marshal should not be entertained lightly by anyone, and there should be incentives in place to dissuade those who might potentially abuse their appointments. The penalties for doing so - be it from impersonating a licensed citizen marshal to unholstering a firearm aboard a plane in flight without legitimate caues - should be extremely severe. As much or even more than what we expect from police officers who "cross the line".
But... a flight with an armed citizen marshal or two (or three or four) would be the safest possible airline trip in terms of passenger safety outside of technical malfunctions. Even the mere possibility that a jetliner might have a citizen marshal onboard would automatically make that plane a "poison pill" for anyone contemplating a terrorist act.
Ask yourself again: would Mohammed Atta and his fellow terrorists been so quick to pull out the box-cutters on September 11th, 2001 if the slightest thought entered their minds that not only might they not reach the cockpit, but that they would be shot dead the moment they started trying?
I don't think so. I don't believe that any terrorist - who is hoping for a "successful mission" - would ever try to pull off such an act, if they knew they would be impeded from reaching their goal by the very people they are trying to terrorize.
No, looking to the federal government is not, and will never be, the answer to the question of our safety. We must start looking at ourselves, and decide on our own that we are going to take up the rifle in our own defense against all enemies... be they foreign or domestic.
Citizen marshals: it's an idea well worth considering, I do believe.
Hell, in a sane world, every citizen in this country would be a marshal, anyway.
Why I don't want an iPod
Sales of Apple's iPod are plummeting, according to a story from The Observer. Here's one of the reasons that are discussed...
Although it has sold nearly 60 million actual iPods and a billion downloaded songs worldwide, cracks have begun to appear in the edifice. The Zandl Group, a New York-based trends forecaster which regularly interviews a panel of 3,000 consumers aged 25-35, recently picked up its first significant criticisms. 'The iPod is far and away the most popular tech gadget with our panellists - however, for the first time we are hearing negative feedback about the iPod from some panellists,' said the organisation's spokeswoman, Carla Avruch. 'Panellists cite that the batteries are not replaceable, so when they die the entire player must be replaced,' she said. 'We have heard from some conspiracy theorists that the batteries are made to die soon after the warranty ends.This is the #1 reason why I refuse to invest any good money in an iPod. For it to not have a replaceable battery is one of the most insane business decisions I've ever seen, right up there with the conscious choice by Sony to make the Betamax VCR not able to record more than an hour of television. I don't know why Steve Jobs and the other suits at Apple haven't considered the fact that consumers would gladly buy extra batteries for their iPods for a myriad of reasons... not the least of which is being able to have a spare or two handy for when the iPod runs out of juice on long trips. Or when the iPod battery runs out after two measly hours of watching video like a couple episodes of Lost. There's no reason in the world why anyone should be robbed of this obvious convenience. But I guess in the world according to Apple, nobody is supposed to ever be more than a few hours away from a readily available electrical outlet.
(I guess Apple doesn't want the extra $$$ that selling spare batteries would generate, either.)
Hey Apple guys: offer us an iPod with user-replaceable batteries, and I will gladly reconsider striking it from my Christmas wish list. In the meantime, I'm perfectly happy with my 20 GB Dell Pocket DJ MP3 player. Yeah, it might not have a replaceable battery either... but its able to hold a charge much longer than the iPod. And I might add that after a year and a half of using it, I haven't noticed any degradation of battery output at all, and I use it plenty often enough. Might be worth thinking about getting a Pocket DJ if you're hot to get an MP3 player while manufacturers twiddle their thumbs on giving us replaceable batteries.
Saturday, September 09, 2006
Peter the YouTuber talks about S-E-X
"geriatric1927", also known as Peter the British pensioner, is at it again... and you won't buh-leeeeeve what he's telling us about this time! An absolute must-see if for no other reason than for how he grabs your attention within the first 15 seconds of video. Has Peter finally gone too far?! Nah, I don't think so: he's actually very polite when he talks about how the subject was handled in the youth of his generation. I will say this though: Peter the YouTuber has officially replaced Isaac Asimov as "The Sensuous Dirty Old Man" :-PFriday, September 08, 2006
AGAIN?! Now "Canadian Idiot" by Weird Al hits online
For the second time in 24 hours, a song from "Weird Al" Yankovic's upcoming Straight Outta Lynwood album has appeared online. A little while ago somebody (that I haven't been able to recognize from any previous correspondence) sent me a very high-quality MP3 of "Canadian Idiot", Weird Al's parody of Green Day's "American Idiot". Last night it was "White and Nerdy" that appeared on Chamillionaire's Myspace page. And the other week Al released "Don't Download This Song" (as a legitimate free download of all things). At this rate we're going to have every track on Straight Outta Lynwood available over the Internet by the end of next week.
So what's "Canadian Idiot" like? It's a spot-on spoof of the original by Green Day, poking fun at everything stereotypical Canadian from hockey to beer to guns. I like it a lot (then again I like just about everything Weird Al does so I might be biased a bit :-) I just hope that this is the last song from the new album that gets leaked before the CD's street date: I mean, there has to be something fresh to make us ought to want to buy the album that much more, right?
Look at it if you wanna
No way am I going to post the pictures of this thing here. It wigs me out too much to even think about it. But in case anyone's interested: "Weird" Ed found an... interesting... collection of photographs. What they are of is anyone's guess. Here's the blog post he made on his Myspace page about it. You can find more images from the link he's got there. I'm warning ya though: I took one look and the first words out of my mouth were "Ye gods... what the hell IS that thing?!" If you have nightmares tonight after taking a gander, don't say I didn't warn you.
How SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE should have REALLY ended
Too funny...
EDIT 8:19 AM EST: I just found where this video originated from. It's a site called How It Should Have Ended and there's even MORE hilarious stuff to be watched over there. You just have to see this one for Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory...
Forty years ago today...
...a little television show called Star Trek debuted.
Live long and prosper.
(P.S.: the original show will always be cool.)
ANOTHER new Weird Al song makes its way online!
Wow... "Weird Al" Yankovic really needs to slow down these online releases or else we'll have heard all the songs on his next album by the time it comes out on the 26th :-) Without any kind of announcement about it or anything the first track from Straight Outta Lynwood - the parody of Chamillionaire's "Ridin'" titled "White and Nerdy" - is on Chamillionaire's Myspace page right now! So far I've listened to it about three times and it's playing again now. I was really wrong though: I was so sure this song was going to be about Napoleon Dynamite. But it's still pretty funny. This could have been my theme song when I was in high school :-P
Thursday, September 07, 2006
That's gotta hurt
The above photograph is that of a cell phone lodged in the intestines of an inmate in an El Salvador maximum security prison. Here's the story via Yahoo!...Cell phones found inside four prisonersMakes you wonder how painful this thing is if it's set on "vibrate".
Wed Sep 6, 10:57 PM ETSAN SALVADOR, El Salvador - Cellular telephones were found inside four prisoners in El Salvador's maximum-security prison, authorities said Wednesday.
The discovery was made Tuesday at the prison in Zacatecoluca, in central El Salvador, after suspicious officials took X-rays of each of the inmates, federal corrections chief Jaime Villanova said.
The names of the prisoners, all members of the dangerous Mara Salvatrucha gang, were not released in order to avoid jeopardizing an ongoing investigation that began a month ago, he said.
Capt. Juan Ramon Arevalo, director of the prison known as Zacatras, said the gang members had introduced the cell phones, wrapped in plastic bags, into their bodies through their anuses. Authorities also found nine cell phone chips and one charger.
"Each one had a cellular with a number of chips," Arevalo said, adding that one also had hidden a charger in his anal cavity.
The inmates allegedly used cell phones to direct criminal activities on the street from inside the prison, Arevalo said. The smuggled phones were found during an investigation at prisons throughout the country amid complaints from business owners of extortion by gang members.
Prisoners change phone chips frequently to avoid being traced, Arevalo said.
The police have doubled their security levels to combat the criminals.
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
The full track listing for Weird Al's STRAIGHT OUTTA LYNWOOD
So far I haven't seen any official announcement, but so many sources are consistently reporting this so this may very well be the real deal. This is the point before "Weird Al" Yankovic releases a new album when all of his fans will be speculating about what the songs will be like exactly. For me personally, there are always some song titles that I have to wonder what in the world could possibly be funny or original about them... and then the album comes out and I wind up playing those very same songs over and over and over again, they are so good. Last time it was the songs "Hardware Store", "Bob" and "Wanna Be Ur Lovr" (by far the most risque thing Al has ever done). So far as Straight Outta Lynwood goes, I think this time "Pancreas" and "Virus Alert" might be the big surprises.
Anyway, here's the list of what will be on Straight Outta Lynwood:
1. White and Nerdy - parody of Ridin' by Chamillionaire featuring Krayzie BoneAs you migh know, "You're Pitiful" was originally going to be on this album, but James Blunt's record company asked Al not to do it (which is why he made it a free download). One thing I've noticed is that the parodies from Straight Outta Lynwood seem to be those of some very current songs, like the Taylor Hicks one. Makes me wonder if Al might be considering doing song parodies all the time and sticking them on the Internet after he finishes them. That would definitely be a good self-marketing thing to do (in my opinion marketing himself through his own website and his Myspace page like this is something very innovative that Al is doing).2. Pancreas - an original song with an animated video on the DualDisc
3. Canadian Idiot - parody of American Idiot by Green Day
4. I'll Sue Ya - an original song that also includes an animated video on the DualDisc
5. Polkarama! - Al's usual polka medley of current well-known songs (my favorites of those have got to be Polka Your Eyes Out and Bohemian Polka)
6. Virus Alert - an original song about computer viruses and the like that infect your computer from your friends's e-mail outboxes, also featuring a music video is animated by David Lovelace, the creator of Retarded Animal Babies. According to Lovelace, "just about every RAB character will have cameos in the video."
7. Confessions Part III - parody of Confessions Part II by Usher
8. Weasel Stomping Day - an original song to be given a "Robot Chicken video treatment" with a stop-motion animation piece on the popular cartoon's 35th episode, airing on September 24, 2006.
9. Close But No Cigar - an original song "kind of about this cat who's trying to hit on several girls, but he finds out that they're not really his type." John Kricfalusi, creator of Ren & Stimpy, and Katie Rice are working on the animated video.
10. Do I Creep You Out - parody of Do I Make You Proud by Taylor Hicks
11. Trapped in the Drive Thru - parody of Trapped in the Closet by R. Kelly
12. Don't Download This Song - a style parody of We Are the World which "describes the perils of online music file-sharing." Also features a Bill Plympton-animated video.
Taylor Hicks fan that I am, I can't wait to hear "Do I Creep You Out" :-)
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
Ten years ago tonight: Fran roars ashore
I remember where I was and what I was doing exactly ten years ago right now: at our regular Thursday afternoon Baptist Student Union meeting at Elon College. "Weird" Ed and I had been working since a few weeks before classes started that fall at an on-campus computer store, and all day we'd been using the computers we had on display to watch as Hurricane Fran was creeping toward us. Think it was about 11 that morning that it was pretty obvious to everyone: we were dead in the middle of Fran's sights. I left the store about quarter 'til 5 and by the time I got to the commons room at Virginia dorm, we started getting rain from the outer bands of the storm.So we had that good home-cooked meal that one of the local churches always provided us on Thursday nights and I left for the apartment around 6. By this point the rain was coming down harder. I stopped at the shopping mall on the way and thought that I could use some reading material to pass what threatened to be a long evening, I bought Tom Clancy's new novel Executive Orders. As I was leaving the mall I saw that it had really started pouring down, so figuring that I needed one anyway I bought an umbrella at Sears, then ran through the parking lot to my car, and went on home.
As the night slowly progressed, the wind began to pick up, until about 11 o'clock it had become a roaring din. By that time I had decided to hit the sack for the night and tried to get some sleep. But being on a second-floor apartment, in a bedroom facing into a courtyard between three other buildings and about five tall trees right out the window... well, I swear I spent every waking moment laying in bed and just knowing that at any second one of those trees was going to come crashing through the wall and kill me instantly. Never did get to read my book, by the way.
So it went throughout the night. And I don't know when it was that sleep finally overtook me: maybe around 3 or 4 in the morning. And my alarm clock woke me up at 6:30 a.m. When it did, I listened and heard nothing else: no wind, no patter of raindrops... and I was thinking "hey that wasn't so bad!" Obviously we still had power. So I got up and took a shower, not even bothering to turn on the television for morning news about the hurricane. Forty-five minutes later I did, and stupid me finally started comprehending the devastation that had wracked us during the night...
It turned out that where we were in Burlington was one very narrow sliver of geography that managed to have electricity going nonstop through the storm. A few minutes into the broadcast they ran at the bottom of the screen that classes at Elon had been cancelled. I woke up my roomie and told him not to bother going into class, that he could sleep all day if he wanted. Right after that is when I looked out into our parking lot: every square inch covered in the green of blown-off leaves and twigs. I went downstairs, got in my car and went to get my usual daily newspaper. The power was out at the Circle K and a cop was directing traffic at the intersection. With the store closed I drove up and down Mebane Street trying to find a place that was open, all along the way shaking my head in disbelief: at least five or six houses had trees fall through the roof. One whole stand of trees that had been there was just... gone. Definitely believe a tornado had touched down there.
I went back to the apartment for a little bit, then headed back out, this time going to Elon. I soon hooked up with "Weird" Ed and we walked around the campus together oggling the damage: there was a tree thrown into the middle of Lake Mary Nell. Another tree had fallen in front of Virginia, another ripped out in front of the auditorium. Someone from the student newspaper took a picture of Ed and I standing at the base of one up-rooted tree: the base was easily three or four feet taller than we were standing.
We went inside the student center, which had been turned into an emergency shelter for any students wanting to take cover there. We ran into a friend of ours named Kendall and he started telling us the craziest thing: that all during the night students were running around out in the storm, sliding down slopes and splashing in the mud. With all the trees that had gotten knocked down it's nothing short of a miracle that nobody got killed that night!
I spent about two hours on campus, then headed back to the apartment, had a frozen pizza for dinner and with nothing else to do tried watching some TV... except the cable was out: the one utility that Fran had foiled for us.
Anyway, that was Hurricane Fran: one of the most devastating that has hit this state in the past quarter-century or so. A few years later we were hit by Floyd, which did a lot more damage but didn't come nearly as inland as Fran did. But all the same, Fran one one heck of an experience to go through. You haven't really lived until you have something like a Category 3 hurricane bearing down on you, especially after watching it track right at you for two or three days previous. Like I've said before, hurricanes are the thermal-moisture dispersion engines from Hell. And to be in the path of one is like looking down the barrel of God's shotgun. It's one of the most dangerous things you can ever go through... but man, I'd be lying if I said that spending the night with Fran didn't give me a rush like few things ever had.
Does anyone really care about Katie Couric taking over the anchor chair?
Just read about all the fireworks that CBS plans to set off tonight to celebrate Katie Couric taking over the anchor chair of the CBS Evening News. And I have to wonder: so what?
Couric is being paid - whether too much so is something I'll leave up to the reader to decide - to look into a camera and report the news, and that's all. She's not even being a real on-the-beat reporter at that, even. What she will start doing tonight is something that literally anyone could do. I mean, how much talent does it take to read a teleprompter?
Don't take this to mean that I wish Couric anything but the best in her new job. But let's be realistic: in a sane world this would be a minor transition at most. As it is, Couric's prominence tonight is symptomatic of a country obsessed with the cult of celebrity, where everyone is trying to be famous for the sake of being famous. What is sorely lacking as a result is the quality of simple character. Which I hope it is that Couric is bringing to the news desk, instead of merely being a pretty face that CBS has lured in the hopes of raking in higher ratings.
I guess what I'm really trying to ask is: are there any real people of character left in this country... or have we all become empty suits waiting to be held up by sudden fame?
(Most of this country's leaders are the latter, parse that as you will.)
I AM LEGEND: A movie that should have been made ten years ago
Ten years ago, Ridley Scott started pre-production on I Am Legend, a movie based on Richard Matheson's 1954 novel with the same title. I Am Legend had already been adapted twice before for the big screen: The Last Man on Earth with Vincent Price and then as The Omega Man with Charlton Heston in 1971 (BTW the musical score from The Omega Man, composed by Ron Grainer, is one of my all-time favorite movie soundtracks). Well, by all accounts Scott was going to make the most faithful version of the original novel yet. I was able to see some of the concept art at the time: the vampires looked utterly terrifying, the locales very much desolate ruins.
And running around in this wasted world, trying to stay alive and racing to get indoors before the sun went down was going to be Robert Neville... played by Arnold Schwarzenegger. It was going to be Schwarzenegger's finest late-Nineties role (seeing as how Crusade never got made, which still irks me because that would have been an awesome film to behold). This would have been the role that defied everything else that Schwarzenegger had done, and would have defined who he would be as an actor for the next decade or more. Ridley Scott's I Am Legend would have been nothing short of epic... had it wound up in serious production.
What happened? I blame Joel Schumacher's Batman & Robin more than anything. That film poisoned the well of everyone who was involved with it: Schwarzenegger and George Clooney were the only ones who really managed to escape that mega-bomb of a fiasco, but it still took awhile. By the time the stink had finally worn off from that rubber-nippled nightmare, I Am Legend had quietly been shelved. The last I heard anything being done with it was probably summer of 2000.
Well, tonight Ain't It Cool News has the first pics to be found from the production of I Am Legend. I had no idea production had started up again on this. And I would like to say that I'm really looking forward to seeing this novel given the big-budget treatment...
...but right now I'm not all that very impressed with where this is going. For one thing it's being written by Akiva Goldsman, whose previous work includes - yup - Batman & Robin. For another thing, this is going to star Will Smith as Neville. Which I like Will Smith a lot, but as a fan of the novel... well, I just can't see it working out with him in the role. I think they're going to play it more as an action thriller, when I Am Legend is not that at all. It's about the last normal man on Earth trying to retain his humanity, fighting to stave off hunger and temptations that if he were to succumb to them would mean the end of his life... or begin the damnation of another. I mean, to me the most heartbreaking part of I Am Legend is when he finds the dog: would that make it into a movie with Will Smith? Would they keep the ending just as it is in the book? I dunno...
Well, I've never seen The Last Man on Earth but I have seen The Omega Man and although it's dated quite a bit now, I would definitely recommend it especially if you want to see Charlton Heston at his gun-totin' finest. And by all means, do read Richard Matheson's I Am Legend: one of the books that Stephen King credits with starting his own writing career. It's very much the most original twist on the classic vampire tale that I've ever seen... and it's just a darned good book. In the meantime, I'll withhold further judgement on this new movie until I see more coming out of production.
But I still sometimes wonder just how cool the Ridley Scott version would have been...
Monday, September 04, 2006
Behold the crippled writer
I was going to post a comment to my friend Chad's report on his running the 2006 Rock 'n' Roll Half-Marathon in Virginia Beach. But alas, I can't! See, the other week for some reason or another I "migrated"/upgraded/whatever my Blogger account to the new "Blogger beta", which is somehow tied in to my Google Gmail account. Well, there are some great new features that make blogging with Blogger a lot better than before... but the downside is that at the moment I can't comment on anyone who's using the non-beta version. This is the third time this weekend that I've been caught in this technical snafu.
Blogger techs swear that we'll "soon" be able to comment on non-beta blogs, but in the meantime I've a lot of friends posting good stuff and I can't leave any replies on 'em. Hope its something that gets fixed sooner rather than later.
"Crocodile Hunter" Steve Irwin is dead
What a tragedy. He seemed to be a man who really enjoyed his work. And he has such a beautiful family - his wife Terri and two kids - also.
Darn, this is just so wrong. This was a guy who was everywhere over the past ten years or so. He even had his own movie, Collision Course, that came out one time. I watched it on HBO a few years ago and it was pretty good.
Well, what else can be said? He was definitely a one-of-a-kind character.
EDIT 03:10 PM EST: About five years ago when Jurassic Park III was hitting theaters, those wacky guys at WWWF Grudge Match pitched a battle between Steve Irwin and the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park. It was pretty hilarious and of course Irwin being the Crocodile Hunter(tm) he won handily. This matchup pretty much summed up the kind of character that Irwin was so in honor of the the work that he did, here is the link to Steve "Crocodile Hunter" Irwin versus Jurassic Park.
Sunday, September 03, 2006
"You got to know when to hold em, know when to fold em"
Well, there's now a new addition to my very short list of vices. For the past several months or so, after seeing it played quite a bit in tournaments on television, I've toyed around with the idea of learning to play poker. But apart from UNO and being a pretty good hand at blackjack, card games really aren't my forte at all. But something about being able to play poker had some kind of allure for me. I didn't really know where to start though.
And then last week at the TV station, while we were running a weekly sports show, I caught a commercial for something called Bodog.net, where supposedly you can learn to play poker quite easily. I checked out the site and a couple of days ago signed up for a free account. After that came downloading the Bodog.net poker client (about 5 megabytes or so). Then it was just a matter of watching others play it before jumping in myself...
Here's the Bodog.net poker screen (take a wild guess which player I am :-) No real money at stake here: when you sign up with Bodog.net you get $1,000 of play money, and you can come back and get more if you get wiped out at the tables again and again and again. Bodog.net is not to be confused with Bodog.com, which is a real play-for-money online betting venue (they're run by the same company though, a Costa Rican outfit called Bodog). Bodog.net is strictly for fun and learning... and I doubt I'll ever play for anything higher than a coupl'a stacks of nickels anyway.
So at Bodog.net the main game is Texas Hold'em: each player is dealt two hole cards and then there are five community cards which along with your hole cards you make your full hand. It's said to be the most popular variety of poker played these days, and the one used in all those televised poker championships. I knew nothing about Texas Hold'em but after going over the easy-to-follow instructions on the Bodog.net page and then actually playing a few rounds with other people, I found myself getting the hang of it pretty well. I've probably played ten games so far since taking the full plunge last night: I won more than six hundred "dollars" in one game, then make some really stupid decisions and lost it all before going back to the main page to beg for more play-dough. After the last hand I played I had about twelve hundred in my account. That'll probably get wasted before the night's over unless my loved ones can't stand to see what's become of me and stage an intervention to make me stop before I start wagering away my unborn children.
Seriously though, if you've ever wondered what it's like to play a real poker game and don't know where to start but don't want to put your paycheck in real jeopardy, give Bodog.net a try. And who know: maybe this is just the first step on the path that will someday find me being a high roller in Atlantic City or Reno or Cherokee :-P
