Tuesday, July 29, 2008

From Mezz0:
Should Have Faked My Own Death



*My apologies for immediately bumping Primera, but this is sort of topical*

TNT explained to me, upon moving to San Diego and experiencing his first earthquake, "You go through your entire life with the fundamental understanding that the ground beneath you is stable, and until it starts to move, you take this for granted."

I've been in Los Angeles for a year and a half, and have recently contemplated that I'm well overdue for my first earthquake. (I suppose, technically, my second earthquake.) I've prepared myself mentally, so I don't regress into a scared little girl, which would be comforting in the short term, but would definitely derail my survival instincts.

I was at work today around noon when got a nasty case of the spins. I took inventory, realized I was completely sober, and looked out the window because it felt like a strong wind was shaking the building. Then I realized that I was experiencing my first earthquake. Sweet!

I heard women scream in the distance. It sounded like it was coming from the compliance department, and as they were already lost to the world, they weren't worth saving. Our four, foreign-born developers looked like frightened bunny rabbits, and ran out the door, and toward the elevator.

Our project manager called them back in, and calmly explained to them, like the captain of a ship in the middle of thunderstorm, to get under a door jam or desk, and stop being such fucking pussies. It lasted for a good minute or two, and then tapered off, our building gently rocking on rollers to prevent massive carnage and loss of life.

Afterwards, we had a good laugh at the foreigners who bravely ran away, until they explained to us that in their native land, modern building codes really do not exist, and if they do, can be avoided with a bribe, and an earthquake of the magnitude we just experienced would have killed several thousand people, including everyone in our building.

Touche, Srinivasan. I'll never again laugh at foreigners...Unless they smell bad or harbor terrorists.

Just in case you were wondering, the Dirty Whore survived uninjured. Thanks to everyone who called, oh wait, nobody called, you selfish assholes, outside of two of four immediate family members.

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From la primera:
U and the Indian Wedding

Chapter 1

U knows it’s my favorite movie, so when he saw Monsoon Wedding on sale at the video store he picked it up for me. It has many wonderful subplots, it's filmed gorgeously, and the soundtrack is amazing. Mainly it’s about the inter-relationships of an extended family in Delhi, India preparing for a wedding in the days before. We’d just finished watching it when U commented, “we should make friends with an Indian couple.” Mind you, I’m all for making friends with folks from everywhere, but I generally stop short of seeking out people of specific ethnicities. I mean, if I made a new friend and found out that they had been more eager to befriend me on account of my being American and not based on my own personal charming ways, I might just take it into my head to get offended about it. But that’s just me.

Now, U has only been living here in the US for a little under 6 years, so periodically he surprises me by saying these sorts of things. I’m still trying to teach him that it’s not nice to walk up to a person who looks to have Asian ancestry and ask, “where are you from?” as the person will most likely say, “here,” and understandably feel a little annoyed at the question. U’s used to living in Mexico, where if you don’t look Mexican, you probably aren’t and it’s perfectly friendly to ask a non-Mexican person where they’re from.

So anyways, it looked like U was going to get his wish when two days later we received a “save the date” magnet/picture from “S and R,” a couple dressed in lovely traditional Indian attire.

A little background. Growing up, my family moved around a lot, and from preschool through third grade I lived in DP, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, home of O’Hare Airport and the very first McDonald’s ever (that had no place to sit and no drive-through) – until they built a brand-new one across the street from it and tore the original down. The M family (2 parents, 2 kids) lived across the street from us. J was one year older than me and my very best friend during that time. After my family moved away, J and I still got together for a few summers at various camps, swam in leech-filled lakes, got mosquito bites, slept in cabins that smelled funny. I hadn’t communicated with anyone in the M family for years. S was J’s younger brother. The Ms are maybe the whitest family in existence, and based on the picture, it seemed that S was to be marrying a girl of Indian ethnicity.

“Let’s go!” said U.

Saturday, July 26, 2008

From Mezz0:
Milestone



Can't we, like, bomb some country to fix this problem?

Friday, July 18, 2008

From Mezz0:
It's Practically Legal!

After my aforementioned series of interviews, I was offered a job. My headhunter negotiated on my behalf, and was understandably more enthusiastic than I was when I accepted (she probably personally made 10% of my annual salary in one quick pop).

"There is, just so you know, a drug test…So…Do you smoke pot?” she asked quickly, as though I was about to snatch a winning lottery ticket out of her hand. There was a pregnant pause, third trimester.

"Noooooooooooo." I said, my voice lilting down as I touched my nose. I was suddenly and painfully aware of my lower stomach, about three inches below my navel. Buddhists say this is where your Chi resides. If this is true, someone or something was donkey punching my Chi.

"OK. Well if..Because if you did, I would just tell you to buy some Goldenseal at GNC beforehand.”

When exactly was my last dance with Mary Jane? I walked backwards in my mind until I hit a fuzzy patch that occurred roughly twenty minutes after I returned home from my interviews. After such a stressful couple of hours, there was just one way to wind down properly. To wind down completely. So I invited Bob Hope over for a little fun. Oh we had fun all right. I had saved up “Trailer Park Boys – The Movie” for such an occasion. Yes, we had fun, but Bob Hope always leaves without picking up the tab.

I hung up with my headhunter, and called every hep cat I knew, and asked them to drop me some science on passing drug tests. With my cellio pressed to me ear, elbow pointing out, I listened to several people say, “Duuuuuuude…that suuuuuuuuuuucks!” I drove to Trader Joes and purchased several gallons of pure cranberry juice (not from concentrate), two cases of bottled water, and three-dozen grapefruit. Next, I marched into GNC, made eye contact with the clerk, and with no time to spare said, “I’ve got to pass a drug test.”



From her reaction, I might as well have been heroin thin, pale, and had track marks covering my entire body and face. I wanted to say, "This is California! Don't judge me! It’s practically legal!”

She pointed me towards the Goldenseal, and with great contempt, rang up my order. When I arrived back at home, I immediately scoured the Internet for some good, solid information. Within an hour or two, I hit jackpot. A forum moderated by two former lab techs in a drug testing agency.

So you want to pass your drug test?


Interesting facts:
  • “Cleansing the system” by drinking water days before your drug test does absolutely nothing.
  • Exercising the day of your drug test does more harm than good.
  • Goldenseal is worthless, and is a known “masking agent” which makes you look guilty, of either drug use or homeopathy.
  • Anything you can buy at a head shop is probably a bad idea. At best, they will use the correct techniques outlined below improperly, at worst they will trigger a masking agent.

All you have to do is the following
  1. Drink 8 oz of fluid (Mix in some diuretics like cranberry juice, coffee, etc.) every 15 minutes for three hours prior to you test.
  2. Approximately 45 minutes before your test, down roughly 2000% the FDA daily recommended amount of vitamin B2.

    (This is surprisingly hard to find in local stores, unless in the form of a multi-vitamin, which is fine, but has other B-vitamins that in high doses causes panic and panic prone individuals. If you have time, it's easy enough to order online.)

Optional - More Than 48 Hours Prior To Test:

  • Take daily creatine supplements, preferably the powdered kind. (Creatine takes between 24-48 hours to metabolize, so you can taper off when you get to T-24 hours)
  • Exercise vigorously daily - Your goal is to drop some fat, which is where the THC canniboids are stored, so ideally you will be doing low intensity, long workouts like walking at an incline for 60 minutes at a time.
  • Eat a low fight, high fiber diet


Optional - Less Than 48 Hours Prior To Test:


  • Eat high quantities of red meat and/or salmon and/or tuna. Now your goal is to gain some fat to dilute the ratio of fat to THC canniboids.
  • On the day of the test, your goal is to completely dilute your urine. The labs may be onto you that you are attempting to dilute, and there are two main tests for dilution – color and creatine levels. The color is taken care of by the Vit B-2. The creatine is taken care of by supplements, and the red meat and fish.
  • Four aspirin an hour three hours before your test may fool some old tests, and will not do any harm


    During the test, make sure you are alone in the bathroom. If an attendant attempts to look over your shoulder, say something to embarrass him like, “You’re not going to stand there and fucking watch me piss, are you?”

    Alternatively, you can say, “Do you mind holding him steady while I position the cup? Don’t be shy. I call him, ‘Curtis.’”



    Either way, once you have some privacy, pull out your Whizzinator and go to….Just kidding, comon’, we worked hard for this!

    Once in the bathroom, just make sure you don’t “donate” the beginning or end of your urine stream. That’s the part filled with nasties, but probably not even because your urine is 95% water at this point, which is why you were trying to be cool in the waiting room while you were having flash backs of a bus in Ireland that had to have made a wrong turn because the Foggy Dew pub closed, like, 4 hours ago, and if the B&B is not seriously right around the corner, something really bad is going to happen, and something really bad probably already has happened in the sense of permanent damage because how much can a bladder take without rupturing or something, and this neighborhood is looking suspiciously Protestant and oh no! Oh no! DON’T LOOK AT ME!

    If the color and/or creatine doesn't fool the folks at the lab, they will mark your sample "Delute" and then it's up to your company whether or not they want to retest you. Word on the street is that a lot of blue collar jobs will retest you, a lot of white collar jobs will not.

    I highly suggest experimenting prior to the test. Achieving a yellow color that looks like urine is more of an art than a science. Speaking personally, by the time I strutted out of the bathroom after having done my bid-ness, I had achieved a yellow to rival Claude Fucking Monet. I nearly wept as I watched myself pass water. The color was a work of genius. I didn’t want to flush it away, but I also didn’t want to arouse suspicion, so I took a picture on my camera phone, and flushed my precious into the Pacific.



    I handed my cup to the monitor who held it up to the light. He looked at me. I looked at him. A moment passed between us. Clearly, my sublime urine triggered something transformational inside of him. He would, no doubt, take up Urophagia, and wander the world, keep on searching for urine of gold.

    I never received a response, either positive or negative, but I just received my first pay check and health insurance cards, so I think I can safely say that I passed the test. So tonight it’s time to screw in the black light, play some Grateful Dead, and see if Bob Hope is down to hang out. It's his turn to buy.

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

From Mezz0:
My Marriage In Post It Notes #2



On my patience with sleeping next to my wife who like, expects half of the bed, pillows, and blankets. On second thought, this could apply to patience with my wife's cleanliness as well.

My Marriage In Post It Notes #1

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Thursday, July 10, 2008

From Mezz0:
Curtis Has Returned


I heard whispers about Curtis' return, but didn't think they were true. I was jogging around the mat doing "high knees" last week when I heard it again, and immediately dismissed it.

"Didja hear Curtis is coming back?" My good friend Phillip Eno whispered?

"His visa ran out," I whispered back, "he had to leave the country for six months, and he started an academy in Rio. This has been confirmed. Quit trying to give me nightmares."

"Remember that time Curtis..."

"Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! I'm trying to concentrate on my plyometrics!"

I had begun to doubt that Curtis really existed. Yes, I have distinct memories of a crazed Brazilian Nazi making grown men weep, but these memories don't jibe with how reality generally unfolds, and besides, when "Curtis" was training us, I was going through an unstable time in my life. If I were to believe in Curtis, I would have to believe in Chet, the pink elephant who used to run with Bob Hope back in the day. To believe in Chet and Bob is to risk all the gains I have made over the past six months.

Did I say six months? Could he have renewed his visa? Did the Department of Homeland Security ignore my anonymous tip? Maybe Chet would know something about this...

My horrors were confirmed recently when I walked into the academy and found myself staring at an angry, giant of a man. He was eight feet tall if he was an inch, and his eyes were black windows into hell. I'd been told that the act of oxygenating his blood stream filled him with murderous rage for anything organic. He looked even bigger than I remembered. Legs the girth of manhole covers, and a constant angry sneer on his ugly face. He was already holding his favorite bamboo stick. He was the mythic, Brazilian incarnation of Thor.

"He's not real. He's not real. He's not real. " I repeated to myself over and over again in the locker room. After donning my kimono, I stared down at the mat until I heard him yell something in Portuguese. Nobody knew what he said, but everyone got up and started running around the room. I looked over my shoulder and saw him add 45 minutes to the clock. The mere act of him doing this broke me mentally. We normally do a high intensity "warm up" of 15-20 minutes that involves running, calisthenics, and drills that are more difficult than any other academy I have ever been to. 45 minutes with Curtis was going to be torture, plain and simple. I tried to go to my happy place, and day dreamed about being water boarded by naked, masked US soldiers.

We ran, we were told to drop and and do ten push ups. We were told to continue running. We were told to drop and do twenty push ups. We were told to continue running. We were told to drop and do thirty push ups. We were told to continue running. The ladder went up to fifty, and that's when he got out the stick. To those of us merely pretending to do push ups, but only going down half way, we received the stick banging an inch from our ear and some words in Portuguese that sounded more like the ancient language of Akkadian.

We were told to run and then told to "sprawl" (hit the deck) on his command. We did push ups and sit ups and squats until failure, and "until failure" means something entirely different when an 8 foot Brazilian Nazi is screaming at you. We drilled and drilled and drilled until the entire mat was wet with our sweat. He tapped into our mammalian brains, and our bodies kept going because they believed they were in danger, and they probably were in danger, and when we realized we were mentally in the place where we didn't care anymore, it was a sweet release. Continuing on was like asking your heart to beat. Our eyes were unfocused, our faces no longer twisted in pain.

We ran in circles, our uniforms so thoroughly soaked in sweat that it was an effort to keep our arms up. He plucked us out individually from the peloton and swung a stick at our heads forcing us to sprawl, and then immediately swung it at the floor forcing us to jump.

After 45 minutes, we sparred, and when someone looked like they were stalling, he yelled out their name, but nobody could tell whose name he yelled out because he was speaking in an ancient tongue, so everyone grappling turned it up a few notches. In between sparring, two guys talked quietly to themselves as Curtis walked by. Curtis said,

"Yaddabo bladabah deebadaah," he said in a crude mimick of the English language. "You sound like girls at a pool party. Pathetic."

We finished and clasped each other's hands and pulled each other in for hugs thinking to ourselves, "we made it." We drank from large jugs of water and changed clothes. We left and said good night to Curtis who just sneered at us with disgust.

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Wednesday, July 09, 2008

From The Youngest:
Obama Keeps it Real
Destroys Hopes and Dreams of Black Youth using Urban Slang, Celebrity Knowledge

"You are probably not that good a rapper. Maybe you are the next Lil' Wayne, but probably not, in which case you need to stay in school," Obama, D-Ill., told a cheering crowd, brought to a standing ovation at a town hall meeting in Powder Springs, Georgia.

Obama said he knows some young men think they can't find a job unless they are a really good basketball player.

"Which most of you brothas are not," Obama, who played basketball in high school, a sport he continues to play to this day, said jokingly.
"I know you think you are, but you're not. You are over-rated in your own mind. You will not play in the NBA."

















[CAPTION - above]
Despite Barack "how can we compete against that black kid" Obama helping his Hawaiian High School basketball team win the championship, he was not drafted by the NBA or any reputable colleges or universities.

Not having sufficiently honed his rapping, pimping, or rock slinging skills, a bitter Obama eventually went the way of other notable blacks in history and decided to devote his life to "Fucking With Whitey on Whitey's Turf".



Thursday, July 03, 2008

From The Youngest:
McCain is a freak for Craps, rebellious, old.
Obama is a winning Poker player, elitist prick.
If McCain wins, will he eliminate our national debt by betting his wife's entire inheritance on the pass line? If Obama loses, will he be the first black James Bond? Carl Rove seems to think so. In between quail hunting expeditions and meeting with oil tycoons he explained:

"Even if you never met him, you know this guy," Rove said... "He's the guy at the country club with the beautiful date, holding a martini and a cigarette that stands against the wall and makes snide comments about everyone who passes by."

AND he plays poker, getting involved in rediculous hands like "quads over quads". That's even more unbeleivable than what Hollywood tells us.







<---"What you got? You got middle pair? Busted flush draw? You bet into me with that? I raise you... you... bitch."

Wednesday, July 02, 2008

From The Youngest:
From The Sound of It, I Think It Was #2...or Cataloging a Trip
(before I forget everything)
(didn't take time to optimize the funny)
(This was all written several weeks ago)

This probably isn't going to work, it's not often that I succeed in being funny or entertaining when I set out to do so…but what can I say? I am a clown and feel like I am here to entertain you. Also, I'm especially bad at not talking about poker after recently returning from a poker vacation--and half-assed poker entries seem to have taken up the majority of my posts lately.

Mezz0, God bless his soul, used up some frequent flier miles and flew out a few hours before I arrived in Las Vegas several weekends ago. I ended up spending most of my flight studying a former FBI agent's book of poker tells and trying to figure out the relationship between an attractive 16 year old Mexican girl, the obese, slobby 40 year old lady sitting next to her, and a white baby that was old enough to wave at me but not old enough to speak. Or maybe she was old enough to speak…but she became petrified after I glared at her for interrupting my book by waving her dirty baby hand in my direction.

I couldn't figure them out, and what made things more difficult for me was that the Mexican girl kept saying really bizarre things--the kind of things that would be more likely to come from a strung-out meth freak than from a cute little (she might have been 18) Mexican (or Cuban) girl with an accent…

















"Chu know what I'd like to see right now? I'd like to see dis plane flip over and fly upside down."

(ok, maybe she was closer to 15 years old)

"Where did you go to school?"
-muffled mumbling from the 40ish woman-
"Chu know I graduated college? I went to Haaarvard. Chu know I graduated Harvard?" I graduated from Harvard"

(20…maybe?)

*groan* "I can't wait to get back home! (to Las Vegas) I am going to party tonight! (to older woman) Chu wanna go out and party tonight?"

"Nah, I'm not really going out tonight, but tomorrow…I'll be going out tomorrow."

(18, must be 18)

(to older woman)"I don't know why I paid for you to fly out here."

(???)

"Chu know what chu are to me…you a cock-a-roach, main."

The whole situation was entirely too confusing. I tried utilizing some of the advice I was reading about in the book of tells but I failed miserably. At times I thought that the older woman was a schizophrenic baby abductor. At times I thought that the Mexican girl had never met the older lady before boarding that plane. I should also mention that I was drinking heavily and may have misheard a thing or two. It was a goofy situation and it put me in a strange and nervous mood when I arrived in the City of Dreams.

















After I entered the Imperial Palace I quickly found Mezz0 playing at the $2/$4 limit table. I registered at the hotel lobby, got my room key, and we settled into our rooms before heading over to Bally's to play some $3/$6 limit--primarily so Mezz0 and I could sit at the same table.

The drinks came slowly and we had a vulgar, stoned Persian sitting next to us. The bastard wouldn't stop talking into Mezz0's ear. Meanwhile I managed to get up +$100. Then the poker room traffic slowed down, the drinks started coming faster, the Persian left, and half the table was replaced by middle-aged, slightly lesbianish, woman from the east coast who knew each other on varying levels of intimacy. I slowly pissed away my money as I grew more inebriated and angry at the East Coasters…and I'm pretty sure that I managed to say some offensive things to the ladies...but I was far too drunk to remember any of my antics. I'm sure that I showed a bluff or two and all I can remember is the lesbians scowling at me and referring to me as "That drunk kid at the end of the table". Eventually I busted and waited for Mezz0 to finish an orbit--I think he ended up winning a little money--and we headed over to the roulette tables. Mezz0 watched as I taught my brilliant system to him. I looked even smarter when I ended up +$120, cancelling out the $100 that I lost at the limit poker table.


<--- The only lesbian sex act available, scissoring.






As we walked back to the Imperial Palace "Tea House" diner, dodging morning joggers, I explained my contentedness in the face of defeat at the poker table, "Yeah, I may have lost $100 at the poker table…but did you consider how much money I earned in drinks? I'm pretty fucking sure that I made a new enemy or two as well."

We entered the Tea House and returned an unfriendly host's disapproving shake of the head with a mean, dirty, drunken stare. I was a little bit embarrassed to be at this stage of drunkenness after sunrise and began pitying the poor employees who were going to have to deal with us for the next hour. I felt more comfortable after entering the restaurant and spotted a man and a woman passed out in a booth across the room...and I mean, fucking dead-cold passed out. The man was sleeping with his feet against the wall and half of his torso hanging off the end of the booth, the back of his hand was dangling on the filthy carpet. His girlfriend was passed out with her head/back leaning at a grotesque angle against the wall and over the table, feet propped up on the seat.

Mezz0 and I took our seats and I spotted a different booth behind him with two girls wearing slinky night-out-at-the-club dresses. One was passed out with her head on the table, drooling. Her friend was trying to stay awake, but every minute or two she would briefly slip into sleep. Her head would drop down lower and lower, and then, suddenly, she'd jolt back into consciousness and look around the Tea House wearily to see if anyone noticed.

We noticed. Every time. And we laughed at her.

Eventually, the cops came in to rouse the passed out couple. They half-heartedly tapped the man on the foot until he woke up, assessed the situation, and began attempting to wake his companion. The woman didn't seem to be responding to any of her boyfriend's attempts to wake her for at least 5 minutes. Apparently he was concerned with getting charged with battery because, moments after turning to the cops and shrugging his shoulders, he grabbed his woman by the shoulders and shook her violently, banging her head against the wall.

She quickly stood up, looked confused, and rubbed her eyes with the innocence of a child. I thought that it was an adorable scene until they stumbled out, foodless, and I could see that they were both at least 40 years old.

Fucking degenerates.

The next afternoon, Mezz0 and I lounged poolside and soaked in the desert heat with a bucket full of cheap domestic beers. Mezz0 wanted a strawberry and banana daiquiri but, apparently, was too much of a man to ask for one when I took his order. He was not too much of a man, however, to complain that I didn't bring him a strawberry and banana daiquiri, with an umbrella, when I returned with manly American beers.






<--The pussy shit that makes Mezz0 the half-man that he is










We spent the rest of the day checking out the WSOP, spotting poker celebrities, trying to beat video poker, and testing out my roulette strategy at various casinos. I was in a fine gambling mood and suspected, somewhere in the back of my mind, that I should start reigning myself in...especially after I threw $20 into a $1/hand video poker machine and played max credits, $5, and watched $20 disappear in about 40 seconds.

Mezz0 seemed to be enjoying my careless disregard of money and encouraged me to go to the Gold Coast Casino with him so I could try to win my money back in roulette (for future reference, they have $1/game bowling after 12:00 or 1:00am or something). I obliged and quickly disposed of $120. I took a seat next to the wheel, away from the felt, and watched Mezz0 work the table. He did well and I nodded approval, occasionally interjecting to convince him to make increasingly risky plays. The dealer was entertaining us and the waitress didn't seem to mind bringing me drinks even though I wasn't playing...plus we got in on one of the greatest secrets of Las Vegas: The Gold Coast waitresses will bring you a free pack of cigarettes with your free drink. If you wink and goose one of the aging beauties, they'll even bring a pack to the guy who isn't playing anymore.

We continued drinking into the night, eventually ending up at the MGM and my first NL cash table of the trip. I worked myself into a blind state of drunkenness and ended up winning +$400 by the time we called it quits. Memories are hazy for this entire night and only two things stick out.

The first table was fun until it hit 3:00am and a few loose players left. The table started playing extremely tight. Only 6 players were left at the table. The floor refused to break up our table and send us to other seats at the other tables until, on our third request, one of the players at our table was away from his seat.

"Where is this guy?" the floor asked

"I think he went to the bathroom," answered another player.

The floor manager looked around to see if he could spot him walking towards our table.

"From the sound of it," I commented helpfully, "I think it was #2."

I got a couple of laughs, or maybe just Mezz0 laughed. I looked up at the floor manager and smirked. The floor manager looked down at me with a look on his face that said "You classless, drunk, piece of shit asshole. If I wasn't working I would strangle you with my hands." He then proceeded to break up our table.












At the next table I got involved in a multiway pot holding what I thought was JQ suited. The board was x-9-10, I checked and there was a bet and two callers behind me, so I called with the open ended straight draw. Turn was a blank. There was another bet and two more callers, so I called once more. The river was a Q. I checked, suspecting someone at least had two pair. It checked around and some guy flipped his cards showing a low set, the other players mucked. I was in the process of saying, "I've just got a pair." and mucking my hand but I took one last look at my cards and saw that I had J-K offsuite, "Straight! I've got a straight!"

I don't remember anything after that. I assume that Mezz0 and I went back to the hotel during sunrise again. The next day Mezz0 left and I played my second NL cash session of the trip from about 10:30pm until 8:00am the next morning, leaving only because I had a 9:50 flight, and managing to pocket another cool +$960. The locals feared me. I busted two players. I used my improving "poker reads" and, yes, even showed off twice for Mezz0 the previous night, calling hands based on body language.












...but I still have no fucking idea what was up with that chick on the plane.