Poker Potpourrie

Yesterday and today there were some subjects I wanted to discuss, but none of them strong enough for me to actually do more than a bullet list of topics.

Today I'll try to write something, but I still don't feel any overwhelming need to post. I suppose I'm very lucky in the fact that I can just hack out things, without much thought, and without going back time and again to edit. I don't change my mind much, I just grind it out. I feel bad for those writers who are never satisfied with their work, and constantly revise their posts. That would drive me nuts.

Of course, many claim I'm not a "real" writer, and bash me on different sites, but the fact remains that I have never claimed to be one in the first place! That always cracks me up. Someone bashes me for something I have admitted myself so many times.

The type of hate mail I get usually goes something like this:

"I hate you. I think you are such a bit*h. You can't write. You suck. Burn in hell."

I start laughing and think to myself, "And when did I ever claim any of the above?" Usually my hate mail fans are preaching to the choir, lol ;)
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Yesterday on Two Plus Two, someone posed a question that I've posed in person, and on my journal, many times in my life. I had no idea it was such a common phenomenon. Boy, once I did some research, I found out that I am even more of a minority than I thought I was!

The discussion involved a very popular fallacy among humanity. The Bystander Effect. This is when someone is in danger, or being attacked, and no one does anything about it. A mob of people will watch a woman getting attacked, raped and killed, and just stand there, no one willing to go out on a limb to save her. Later they will claim all sorts of odd occurrences in their police statement. These things range from, "I thought she was enjoying it. She seemed to want it," all the way to, "I figured someone else would step in, I didn't want to get involved."

Here is the link to this common phenomenon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect

Here was my post:

The first time I noticed that I was really, really different from other people was in high school when we had some cop come to our driver's ed. class and give a presentation. Besides all of the driving stuff, he kind of talked to us about self defense, especially women alone in a bad situation. He told us that if we were ever threatened or attacked, we should yell, "Fire!" as loud as possible, over and over again. He said we should never yell for help, that no one would come if we yelled for help, but all of the rubberneckers would come out of the woodwork if we yelled, "Fire!"

I thought that was the most f-d up thing I'd ever heard, and that he was out of his mind. I thought about the times I'd come and intervened when someone yelled for help and thought he was crazy.

I found out rather quickly that he was right. Still in high school, I would go to parties that spiraled out of control with no adult supervision and lots of beer. Two testosterone driven guys would somehow get into an altercation. One hundred or more of my classmates would simply stand and gawk while the situation got violent.

Sometimes there would be several guys beating up on one guy. Would anyone come to the rescue of this unfair fight? Not one of the big football jocks, that is for sure. No, it was me, always me, breaking up these unfair fights.

Life moved on, and in the 18 years since then, I've always been the person who will acknowledge that someone needs help.

Humanity (or the lack of) sucks. I don't buy their trumped up excuses, and your shark story just drives this point home.

How I managed to marry one of these guys is beyond me. Glenn explained to me one day why he just never "sees" or "hears" pleas for help. He tried to give me some crazy story about being in shock, and how his mind "shuts down" when he is in a dangerous or confrontational situation (even if he is not the one directly in danger).

I could give you a dozen examples over the past ten years where I was directly or indirectly threatened by strangers, while Glenn stood and did nothing.

Just a month or so ago, we were at Sunset Station playing a small buy-in NLHE game. The dealer was telling me why she thinks Mandalay Bay is the best cardroom in town, and what is our opinion. I gave her my true opinion and suddenly out of nowhere this guy in a wheelchair starts going off on me, accusing me of lying and yelling at me about how "stupid" I am. Glenn just sat there, once again.

Later, he claimed he "never heard a word."
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I have been especially hard on Glenn in the past for this, but doing further research yesterday, I found out that he is actually a huge majority. I'm the minority.

It has been proven that literally hundreds of people will watch a murder/rape/attack in progress, and NOT EVEN ONE of them will do anything about it. This includes such passive support as simply calling the police. The excuses are outstanding. I was horribly appalled when I read what some of them said in their subsequent follow-up police reports.

All of this, of course, goes back to the whole Kumbaya thing I'm always ranting and raving about. The persistence of society to think that everything is wonderful, happy, Kumbaya, hand holding PC. If we just deny that there is something wrong, if we just look the other way, then the world is perfect, right? LOL :)

So, anyway, once again I'm a huge minority. Go figure!
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Last week I was so worked up and angry over my hesitation in posting about issues that needed attention. I was also mad about that albatross hanging on me, and that I'd taken so long to shake it from my life.

So it was a coincidence that I just happened to run into Mason up at the Wynn when we decided to go up at the last minute. Seeing his face, clearly happy to have run into us, made the break all the more sweet.

Not one minute in the 48 hours we spent up in Vegas did I feel that I made the wrong move, or let someone down. Instead, I felt this incredible weight being lifted, with no regrets.

I felt that I would probably have a lot of hate mail when I got home, but I didn't. Not one piece of hate mail, not one angry IM from Yahoo. Not one phone call, not one flame on another journal. Either people saw this coming, and I was the last to acknowledge it, or people simply don't care anymore, what course I take in my life.

For all of you who didn't flame me this time, I thank you.
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Glenn and I were at the gas station the other day when I happened to be flipping through a Cardplayer we threw in the car at some point. I saw an ad for The Bike. Next month they have a big festival, and I would like to take Glenn there to show him the place, and play in some of the juicy cash games.

I brought it up to him, figuring he'd give me one of his million little patent excuses of why we shouldn't go, but to my surprise and delight, he agreed immediately. Maybe he is feening for good, LA games just as much as I am!

So hopefully my health will continue to improve and things will keep along this upward trend in our lives, and we will spend a few days at The Bike in March.

I continue to run well at O8. It seems easier than ever to nut peddle online. The games aren't any better than last year, if anything, they are even worse on Stars, but for whatever reason, I always seem to have the best starting and ending hand, whether I play LO8 or PLO8. I've even been playing some PLO at Stars, and things have gone well. No big wins, no $1000 hands to speak of, just a slow, grinding, rock-tight, nutpeddling upward trend.

Hope you are having a good run as well!

Felicia :)