Happy

New

Year

2007

how the cypriot stole christmas

Where were you thirty-five years ago yesterday?

I forgot about this memorable event until I was ready to go to bed last night. Those of us alive back then will never forget where they were when Garo Yepremian kicked off with a minute and seven seconds left in the fourth quarter of the longest game in NFL history.

It was the Chief and Dolphins at Municipal Stadium in Kansas City and the Dolphins came back and tied the game with 1:07 left. I remember the announcers were as worn out as the rest of us and when Dick Carlson made the call.

….Podolak and McVea at the goal line and Yepremian’s kick is in the air. Podolak up the middle; the ten, the fifteen….

The crowd erupted because they saw the hole develop long before Carlson did, but Carlson continued with his call, even though he was barely audible.

…the twenty, the twenty-five…

If one listened closely one could hear Carlson finally catch on while he uttered the word “five.” He screamed the word. He screamed:

…thirty…

After I spent hours replaying the reel-to-reel tape I made of the broadcast, I was finally able to make out what I believe was the following, but it was so inaudible over the noise of the crowd, I can’t vouch for its accuracy.

...the thirty-five, the forty! He’s gone!…

However, at the time of the live broadcast, the last thing we could understand was “thirty.” There was the uncomfortable half-minute or so when it was not certain what had just happened. Fortunately, after the thirty-seconds of crown noise, Bill Grigsby came on and explained that Podolak had broken the kickoff for 75 yards and was caught by one of the gunners at the twenty-three. It was just a matter of Jan Stenerud—one of the most reliable kickers of all time—to come in and kick the field goal to put the game away. Unfortunately, Stenerud missed the field goal and the game went into two overtimes.

Garo Yepremian finally ended the game with a field goal in the sixth “quarter.” Yepremian was probably the most notable American football player ever to come from Cyprus. It was a point at which the Chiefs’ dynasty began to go downhill and the Dolphins began to rise to the top.

It was one of those days we’ll always remember, even if it didn’t turn out the way we wanted it to, here in Jimbo’s world.

reefer, man

It was reported today that America’s biggest cash crop is not corn. It’s not oats. It’s not soybeans. No, it’s not even wheat.

Do you know what it is?

No! It’s not ginseng, either. No, not crabgrass.

It’s grass.

No, not that kind.

It’s marijuana. Here is the story.

smoke, smoke, smoke that cigarette

According to the story, our country produces $35 billion worth of ganja per year, while we produce $23 billion worth or corn and $7 billion worth of wheat.

Oh, wow, man, that’s a lot of doobie.

You may remember that your mother told you to eat your vegetables. As a country we produce $11 billion worth of veggies. Apparently, we weren’t paying much attention to mommy, because we are growing (and I would assume, consuming) more than three times that amount of wacky weed.

There is something that makes me wonder about this story, however. There are a number of people in this country that grow wheat. They put their profits on their tax returns and report that information to the government. The same is true with growers of corn and vegetables. I am wondering how many people write “marijuana farmer” as their occupation on their tax returns? Consequently, I am wondering how the authors of this study are able to determine the correct amount of marijuana grown.

Almost everyone I know eats things made out of corn and wheat and they eat vegetables regularly. Back in the day, I knew people who were rumored to partake of the fruit of the cannabis plant, but I have to admit I know of very few today. I’m certain they exist. My assumption is that there are probably not as many as there were in olden times who puff on hemp cigarettes.

So I have to think the data are questionable as to whether there really is $35 billion of wacky tobacco being produced and consumed. It just makes one wonder whether we can believe everything we read. Or maybe the way to phrase the question would be is there anything we won't believe?

At least that’s our thought, here in Jimbo’s world.

jimbo: time magazine's person of the year

You can imagine Jimbo’s surprise this morning about discovering he had been named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year.

First of all, just let me say that, unaccustomed as I am to public speaking, I would like to thank of those who had an influence on my life. Many of whom read this blog regularly and I’d just like to say that I couldn’t have done it without you.

Secondly, let me say that I would like to thank all of those with whom I will share the award. I would like to thank all of you personally and individually, but there just won’t be sufficient time.

By the way, here is the story.

Time's person of the year.

Time has named anyone using or creating content on the World Wide Web as their person of the year. It just dawned on me. You are person of the year, too. Congratulations on a job well done and on your selection for this award. It couldn’t have gone to a better person.

Perhaps in our lifetimes, there has been no other event that had a greater influence on the advancement of civilization than the popularizing and commercializing of the Internet. While the Internet has existed since the 1960s, its popularization during the mid-1990s was the watershed event that will define our era. You will recall there were a large group of forward-thinking individuals who seized upon the idea of commercializing of the Internet. Many of them are still around, even though the majority of them and the companies they founded have died and will be buried beneath the sands of time.

The medium they all nurtured has now stretched its power and influence to most every end of the earth. The Internet is like freedom and like civilization. While a few totalitarians still manage to keep the Internet and the exchange of communication from their people, it will only be a matter of time until they will be pushed aside by ideas coming from a cable or tower and flickering on the screen of a monitor.

You will also recall that the sitting President at the time, Bill Clinton, assigned his Vice-President to enable this new-fangled technology, which they dubbed “the information superhighway,” to insure its rapid growth and advancement. Their legitimatization of this technology represented one of the primary functions of government: that is the advancement of ideas of, by and for the people.

It will be poetic justice that long after the settling of the dust and ashes of the Republicans who doubled over with laughter and rolled in the aisles at their 2000 convention at the suggestion of the Vice-President having enabled the internet, the name of Al Gore will probably be the only one of this generation remembered 2000 years from now.

Yes, I accept this award on behalf of all of us. Thank you very much.

At least, that is our acceptance speech, here in Jimbo’s world.

out of office reply

I can’t help noticing that I am getting a very large number of almost instantaneous responses to many of the e-mails I’m sending at work. I’m getting more of them than I am spam. The subject of those responses is “out of office reply.”

I’m not bitching. I think the out of office reply is great, because one can know immediately that the recipient didn’t read your e-mail. For example, today I sent out a request for proposal to three people and got an instant response from each. They were all out of the office, but their out of office replies advised me they would all be back Monday.

But here is the deal.

It used to be that people took their vacation throughout the year, but now, everyone is so busy that they have to take their vacation days at the end of the year. Everyone is on a quest to use up their days before they use up their year. I think it demonstrates a paradigm change in society. We’re all working longer, harder and putting off taking our vacation.

Either that, or we are managing our e-mail programs better.

Anyway, I could go on and on about this, but most of you won’t read it until next week because you’re probably out of the office, burning those last few days of vacation for the year.

At least that’s what we think, here in Jimbo’s world.

twelve more days and still more money

Those of you following along for the last two-plus years may recall that back in my salad days of blogging, I came across a Christmas article by the folks at PNB Bank in Pittsburgh putting a current value on the gifts from the song Twelve Days of Christmas, if they were purchased today. Before I bring you up to date, let’s revisit those glorious days of yesteryear.

http://jimboandhisfriends.blogspot.com/2004/11/twelve-days-and-sixty-six-large.html

Or, maybe my update last year.

http://jimboandhisfriends.blogspot.com/2005/11/twelve-high-dollar-days-of-christmas.html

You may recall that last year the index of dodecagonal Christmas giving was up approximately nine-and–one-half percent. This year the index of twelfth-night philanthropy is up three-and-one-half percent, meaning the average between last year and this is six-and-one-half percent. Due to compounding, if we extrapolate this rate of inflation over ten years, the actual annual rate is 8.7%.

If you are tired of hearing me complain about the lack of fiscal responsibility of our current government and especially the current executive branch of that government, you’d best hit the “next blog” button, now. For despite sacking that worthless John Snow earlier this year, the administration is still behind the eight ball.

Hang your head in shame, Mr. President. Hang your head in shame.

How can this happen in a civilized society?

But, this is the Christmas season and a time of hope and cheer. With the same spirit that the spendthrift in the Twelve Days of Christmas song cast away his money on his true love, I will cast the seeds of hope before you.

Perhaps the new government that will be in place after the first of the year will be more careful with our dollars. Perhaps, unlike our current government, they won’t cast our dollars before the lobbyists in the same way that Jesus suggested in Matthew 7:6, when he said:

“…neither cast ye your pearls before swine…”

All I can say for sure, however, is that the love-struck dude in the song would best be warned to save his money for a rainy day, rather than laying down seventy-eight large to impress his lady.

At least that is what we think, here in Jimbo’s world.

christmas poems, christmas greetings and doom

I think I saw how the next attack is coming yesterday.

It was in the form of a Christmas poem. I received it at work from one of my co-workers by e-mail. To sum it up, it was a poem about a guy who was sitting on the couch on Christmas Eve and his wife had fallen asleep on his shoulder. The kids were tucked away snug in their beds with visions of sugarplums (or Play stations) dancing in their heads.

Anyway, the guy hears something out on the lawn. He springs from the couch to see what was the matter. Instead of seeing a jolly old elf, a sleigh and eight tiny reindeer, he sees an American soldier doing sentry duty in the front yard, protecting his freedom.

The poem went on to remind us how there are American soldiers standing watch over our freedom all over the world this holiday season and we should be grateful. This is, of course, all true and we should. You’re not going to get an argument on this blogsite. The sentiment of this poem is absolutely correct and there is no way a reasonable man or woman could disagree.

The e-mail said that we should forward this poem to anyone we knew.

After I read the poem, I went back and followed the string. It looked as if hundreds of people had seen it. It had been forwarded to what seemed like everyone in several of the previous senders’ address books.

“Well, Jimbo,” one or two of you are probably asking, “why didn’t you forward it to me?”

Those of you that know me well know that I don’t forward frivolous e-mails. It’s because I believe that is where the next attack is coming from.

We have some fairly sophisticated anti-virus software that we can buy and load into our computers. Most of our Internet service providers provide such a service, too. One of the things that anti-virus software does is to keep worms and viruses from spreading. One of the ways that worms and viruses spread is that they give your computer a command to send a virus you may have caught to everyone in your address book. Anti-virus programs try to prevent that. One way of circumventing that is for the user of a computer to give the command, themselves—by forwarding an e-mail to someone else, or everyone they know.

If a terrorist can imbed a virus or worm into a little dancing Santa Claus or a prancing reindeer that flashes “Happy Holidays- send this to everyone you know,” it can be a time bomb waiting to explode. If they can get you to pass along their doomsday virus to everyone in your home and work computer’s address book, the virus can just hibernate in your computer, waiting for the day Al Qaeda has predestinated to shut down our system of communications—or worse.

Maybe when Al Qaeda attacks, my computer will be the one that is still working.

Or, maybe not.

At least that is the view from Jimbo’s world this morning.

short people

There are three things that come to mind this snowy evening here on the Great Plains.

I bought a CD by Randy Newman on Amazon last week and I listen to it through earphones while I engage in important enterprises on my computer here at home. Two of the three things come from song titles on that CD.

It’s Money That I Love

Short People

The third one is our nemesis Osama bin Laden and his group of merry men.

I read on Yahoo! tonight that Al Qaeda may be planning a cyber attack against financial websites in December. If they do, one of their motivations will be that it’s money that they love. If that’s the case, they will be short people. And as the song goes,

Short people got no reason to live.

“What the hell are you talking about, Jimbo?” many of you are asking. “Is the water cold there in the deep end?”

Yes. Yes, it is.

Well, what I’m talking about is that there are two basic ways to play the financial markets. The vast majority of us wake up in the morning, salute the flag and say we are proud to be Americans and proud to be long the US markets. We own stocks, mutual funds and other equities in our personal and retirement accounts. There are some who play the game a different way and they are said to be “short.” A short borrows your stock from your broker and sells it, putting the proceeds in a cash account. The short is expecting the value of the stock he borrowed and sold to go down. He will buy it back at a later time for less money, thereby making a profit. There are many derivative plays one can play on both sides such as options, warrants, etc., and the short person can play options to leverage his buying (or selling) power.

If Al Qaeda is planning an attack on financial websites, one result of such an attack would be a loss of confidence in the financial system and the markets by the people who are invested in these instruments (the “longs” I described earlier). If these attacks were to occur, a result would logically be a decline in the value of stocks. Let me use a recent movie to illustrate how this would work.

Last weekend we saw Casino Royale. It was a reasonably good movie. One of the subplots was that the villain went short on a company that was introducing the world’s largest jet airliner (despite his broker’s warning that everyone was going to make money buying that stock). The villain used the option chain to leverage his short position with the intention of sabotaging the aircraft and deflating the stock. I’ll make you have to go see the movie to know whether he was successful in sabotaging the plane or whether James Bond kicked his ass. But the villain’s plan was to make the stock go down by illegal means—sort of an insider-trading scheme.

This, I believe, is why that if Al Qaeda launches an attack, they will be firmly ensconced in short positions in all the financial firms first. While this might sound crazy, there is a story that has drifted through the financial blogsites for years that Al Qaeda opened short positions in the major airlines’ stocks shortly before September 11, 2001. That scenario was also spoken about in Casino Royale. And, while I’m sure that Al Qaeda insiders all had short positions on that infamous day, I’ll go to my grave confident that the brokerage statement for the man with the biggest short position was mailed to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

If you see the percentage of short positions in the stocks of US financial firms begin to rise, then you should take on an appropriate amount of fear. However, if you don’t mind, I’ll continue to thumb my nose at Al Qaeda and its oddball headmaster. I’ll stay long—long and strong.

At least, that’s the way the prevailing wind is blowing here tonight in Jimbo’s world.

the baron, dean, mark and a couple of dubyas

I’m wondering this morning whether Mrs. Elizabeth (T.D.) Lawson is still with us. I remember when I was living in Lawrence, KS, the local newspaper would interview her every spring—usually sometime in mid-March. I’m confident she didn’t have game, but she had a story. It was always about watching her brother shoot baskets at the family homestead in Halstead, KS, sometime early during the second decade of the twentieth century. Many of us remember the twentieth century, but few remember where we were in 1911. Mrs. Lawson did. Her brother, Adolph Rupp, went on to play four years for Phog Allen at the University of Kansas. While there he played on the 1923 national championship team. Later, he coached the University of Kentucky, where he was known as “The Baron of the Bluegrass,” and retired as the winningest college basketball coach of all time. John Wooden and Dean Smith have since passed him, but it is still in the family as Dean Smith is also a KU grad and played on the 1952 national championship team.

Halstead is just North of Wichita, and yesterday, in Baton Rouge, LA, the Wichita State Shockers upset six-ranked LSU in basketball. The shockers are coached by former KU player and coach, Mark Turgeon. That was about the most exciting thing that happened in Kansas basketball yesterday. That is only because when the University of Kansas knocked off number one Florida, it was actually Sunday morning here. Kansas played Florida in a city that the Associated Press referred to as Lawrence, Nevada. It is a city that just happens to be my home away from home, but I prefer to call it by its real name, Las Vegas, Nevada.

It was an exciting game, late last night and in the wee hours of the morning, here, but I am reminded how basketball is a game that is determined by a hot hand, and the best team doesn’t always win. I’m not sure if Kansas is really better than Florida. After all, Florida had an open look at a three-ball as time expired. The shot was short and the game was over, but it was one of those fifty-fifty chances and it could have gone either way.

It’s a lot more fun, though, when your team wins, even if it requires that one stays up past his bedtime.

Rock chalk.

At least, that’s what we say in Jimbo’s world.

it's christmas eve and these shoes are just her size...

Well, it was bound to happen.

One leads ones life dangerously and one puts himself in harms way. That's what happened last night.

First of all, let me explain that I have been taking a bit of good-natured ribbing about the fact that I have been listening to Christmas music over the past couple of weeks. That's okay. I can take the heat. I can take the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. After all, the ribbing has been in jest. I actually think that Jimbo's girlfriend is starting to enjoy the Christmas music, though she acts as if she does not.

Last night, however, I faced the obvious danger of listening to that kind of music. Yes, you guessed it.

They played that damned "Christmas Shoes" song.

Fortunately, however, they chose to put it on the airwaves just as we were driving into the parking lot of our local supermarket. I hurried up and got into a parking space and turned off the car, and coincidentally the radio. I only had to listen to the part where the guy was hurriedly doing his Christmas shopping, wasn't in the Christmas mood and had not yet arrived at the checkout counter where the saccharine-coated sentimentality occurs.

I was spared this time. But, I'm concerned that it will happen again, sometime before the season is over, and I will hear that little bastard sing his song.

I lucked out this time, but how many times will I be spared?

Only time will tell, here in Jimbo's world.

back when jimbo used to work out...

two years to the day

Some anniversaries today include the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald in Lake Superior on November 10, 1975, and the first time I blogged (coincidently about the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald) on November 10, 2004.

Those of you who were reading back in those days two years ago may recall that I seemed to post more often back then. Those were, of course, during my days of leisure and, since I have un-retired, there doesn’t seem to be as much time to write these things.

My plan is, however, to continue doing it. I’ll continue to give you a piece of my mind—albeit a small piece—as there is not much to spare.

Jimbo’s girlfriend is up early today and so I got up early, too, and I am going to work early. I hope we all have a productive and a good day.

the book of revelations

Life is good.

Tuesday will be an interesting day. If I were a betting man, I would wager the Republicans will hold on to at least one of the two bastions of the legislative branch. This would mean that nothing much will change in Washington over the next two years.

Wait a minute! I am a betting man. And, Jimbo, you may be asking, why are you saying that life is good if you are convinced the election tomorrow isn’t going to change anything?

That is because tonight at dinner I had a revelation.

My visions were different than the ones recorded by some scribe in the court of St. James who got all doped up or drunked up and penned that surrealistic final book of the New Testament, and while doing it probably said something to his companions like:

“Egad, Sirs, doth thou perceive the colours?”

The primary difference was that I was only drinking tea, though I will admit I had more than one.

I live in one of the most conservative states in the nation. The county to the south of the one in which I reside is regarded as one of the most conservative in the most conservative state in the nation. That county is so conservative that a best seller was written a couple of years ago documenting the county’s conservatism.

As I looked around the restaurant in which we were dining, I made the comment to my girlfriend that the place reminded me of the many restaurants in that conservative southern county. I also made the comment that all of the other people in the place had probably come from that county to get a bite to eat and have a drink. They were talking on cell phones and drinking alcoholic beverages. They were paying for their meals and drinks with credit cards. They were watching images on flat-screen monitors.

So what, Jimbo, you may be asking? Then you may be adding, “It looks like Jimbo has finally slipped off into the deep end.”

We all lie to ourselves to some degree. And my point is that sometimes we have a different image of ourselves than what actually may be true. While true conservatives hold on to the old ways and resist progress, I’m convinced these “conservatives” may have slipped off the left hand side of the fence.

The primary tenant of progressive western thought is that the only constant is change and, as Americans we have pushed the envelope of change—and we have pushed it hard. When the true conservative legislators in the western three-fourths of our state said that we would never change our mores and enjoy an alcoholic beverage with our meals in public places, we first said, “Oh, yeah?” Later we went into the voting booths and interjected our opinion. After that, we sat down in public places and enjoyed a potent potable with our repast.

When the electorate put a school board into place that outlawed Darwin, it dawned on us that our kids would go into school dumb and come out dumb, too, if the school board stole knowledge from us. We kicked their asses off the school board a quick as you can say “natural selection.”

When we go to the polls tomorrow, somewhere close by there will be a pole with a rectangular piece of cloth on it. Up in the corner of that piece of cloth, there will be a blue rectangle with fifty white stars-- one for each of the states of the union—symbolic of a union as perfect as any that has ever existed. There will be thirteen horizontal alternating stripes of red and white, representing the original colonies from which this nation emerged. That piece of cloth represents the progression of western civilization, and as long as it stands, we will never, as a country, stand still. We will continue to move ahead. Just let anybody try to stop us.

Life is good.

And we’ll stand by that statement here in Jimbo’s world.

one man; one vote

Several weeks ago on a Sunday afternoon, I was lying on the couch, resting my eyes after a long weekend of working around the house. I injured my left hand a couple of months ago and I’ve been an invalid since, so any physical work is a problem for me, so, like I said, I was resting. I was awakened by a knock on the door. I was too sleepy to realize what I was doing and I got up and answered it. Fortunately, it was not a Jehovah’s Witness at the door.

It was, however, a candidate for state representative and since I had answered the door, I was committed to talk to him. I figured I’d give him some crap and get rid of him in a hurry, but I had to wake up, first. I stepped out on the porch and listened to him while I rubbed the sleep from my eyes. He told me he was against negative campaigning and he wanted to bring a positive message. He seemed like an OK guy to me. After I woke up, I asked him some economic questions and I realized immediately he knew what he was talking about. He told me he owned an economic consulting firm, so that probably explained it. I told him if he stayed positive he had my vote. We have received several mailings from him since and he has kept his word.

Yesterday, we received a mailing from his opponent that blamed the gentleman I met that Sunday afternoon for about every crisis that has ever affected this nation. Remember that time that Howard Dean got all excited and started yelling? I guess the guy I spoke to was responsible for that, somehow. He is also responsible for all the social problems this country has. I considered this pretty impressive, considering he is running for this office for the first time.

We threw the mailing from his opponent into the trash. I’ve pretty much had my fill of negative ads this political season. It is a shame that we will consistently elect the candidate who runs the dirtiest ads. I guess that the result is that we get the kind of government we deserve.

All I know is that one candidate promised me he would stay positive and he has kept his word. Come Tuesday, I’ll go to the polls and keep my word, too. After all, we have a deal. Then, we’ll let the chips fall where they may.

At least that’s our plan, here in Jimbo’s world.

a campaign appearance

A couple of weeks ago, the President made a speech saying that those in the opposition party who didn’t support the war in Iraq were in the party of “cut and run.” I don’t think the Commander-in-Chief gave much thought to the rationale that he was insulting the majority of the American people, because only a minority support his failed Iraq policy.

Yesterday the Chief Executive made the comment that the opposition party was celebrating prematurely their victory at the polls in two weeks.

Today, Donald Rumsfeld said that critics should “back off” in their insistence of a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. One could not be blamed for assuming that the white house was admitting the possibility of defeat the week after next in the mid-term elections.

I say that we shouldn’t jump to any conclusions about this election being over. You may recall in the 2004 presidential campaign, the incumbent went into the final weekend of the race trailing in the polls. However, then, as I believe he will do in the next week or so, the President pulled out his big gun. You may remember that he got a last minute stump speech from his top supporter Osama Bin Laden. I think that we are going to get to see on our televisions the less-than-handsome countenance of the world’s number one republican sometime soon. I think that Osama is going to tell us we are right for opposing the war and that we are right opposing President Bush’s policies. I think he will tell us that we are right in our opposition to the Republican incumbents in congress.

I think that worthless Saudi Arabian pile of feces will say something that will sway the election, just like he did in 2004. And when that happens, can you imagine how much our government will be indebted to that less-than-fresh-smelling camel jockey? And what will ol’ Osama want in return? Will he want more representation of the Taliban in the government of Afghanistan? Will he want us to recognize Mummar Al-Qadaffi as an ally?

Oh, wait. We have already given him both of those things. Whatever he wants, though, he knows that our current government will give it to him.

Maybe this time, though, we’ll have the guts and foresight to throw Osama, George and their kind out. You can call it the optimist in me, but sometimes you just have to hope for the best.

At least that is our hope here in Jimbo’s world.

some people have all the luck

In one of the “Dirty Harry” movies, Clint Eastwood discharges his weapon a number of times during a confrontation with some bad guys and when the action climaxes, he finds himself face to face with one of the perpetrators. He is not sure of the number of unspent cartridges in his weapon, or even if there are any cartridges remaining. He explains the situation to the perpetrator and lets him know the odds of whether there may be a bullet in the gun. This would not be considered smart police work, but it had high entertainment value. Eastwood concludes his logical imperative by asking something like:

“Do you feel lucky, punk?”

Using the logic that criminals are, by nature, risk takers, the “Dirty Harry” series of movies should have ended at that moment with Eastwood dying on the floor. Fortunately that didn’t happen and we continued to be entertained, because, we’ll believe anything, if we want to believe it enough.

The punk didn’t feel lucky and Eastwood was lucky. But, what if your luck is running bad? That is the case of some old guy in Germany. It seems the old dude got hit by a meteorite. Here is the story.

IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE

Have you ever thought there was a black cloud over your head? Have you ever had a day when it was going bad for you? Well, cheer up. It could be worse. Your luck could go as bad as the guy in Germany. What are the odds?

Although the story doesn’t specifically say so, I am going to assume that this is not the only bad thing that happened to the guy. They say bad things come in threes. I’m guessing he was sitting there with a winning lottery ticket in his hand, thinking, “After all these years of playing the lottery, I finally won. With my luck, I’ll get struck by lightning.”

Then, he looks out the window and thinks he has gotten lucky because there is not a cloud in the sky.

“I guess I lucked out this time,” he says to himself in German.

About that time, our friend the meteorite pays his house a visit and as he surveys the damage, he sees the ashes of the lottery ticket on the floor. He says the following, in German:

“%&#$!”

Well, Jimbo, you are saying right now, you said bad luck comes in threes. That is only two.

Ah, yes, there is one more thing. Just imagine, if you would, trying to explain to your homeowners insurance company that your house was destroyed by a meteorite. Good luck collecting. That is number three.

I hope today brings you the best of luck.

At least, that’s our wish, here in Jimbo’s world.

american stars and bars

I sat at an online poker table last night and many of the cities of the people around the table had very “American-sounding” names. I suggested out loud that while they may have been Europeans trying to convince everyone they were bad-asses from the US, trying to look defiant, I suspected that many of these players were actually Americans.

I argue that poker is an American game, and although some foreigners have gotten good at it, the true masters are from the good old USA. It takes something of an entrepreneurial spirit and mindset to master the game, and someday I hope to master it. The game is something Osama Bin Laden and his republican friends and supporters in congress will never understand. It is an American thing; so don’t ever expect Bush or Chaney to have a clue.

It is the same independent spirit that makes us do what they tell us we’re not supposed to do. It’s the same American mindset that made Bostonians throw British tea into the harbor two hundred and some odd years ago. When the government tries to take America away from us, you had better bet, that we’ll be telling them, “Hell no, you aren’t.”

And even when the chips are down and when it is time to cut and run, or stay and fight and make a bet on America, you can probably guess what will be the next words out of my mouth:

“I’m all in.”

And I won’t be the only one. No, not by a long shot.

At least, that is the wager here in Jimbo’s world.

republicans gone wild

On Friday of last week, Bill Frist of Tennessee set into motion legislation to take away my privilege of being able to play Internet poker. Come Monday, he is in Afghanistan saying that the Taliban should be brought into the government of Afghanistan. He says we cannot win the war in Afghanistan militarily.

read the story here

I’m rubbing my eyes, hoping I’m going to wake up and this will all be a nightmare, but I’m afraid it’s true. First, the Bush administration and the Republican congress starts a war in Iraq to draw our attention away from their stealing every cent we have in our treasury. While they do it, they take their focus off the Taliban and Bin Laden and then the war in Afghanistan—which was virtually won—falls into the loss column. Then, they start telling everyone what a good friend Muammar Al-Qaddafi is and that he is our buddy and ally in the war on terrorism, disregarding that he was once the poster-boy for worldwide terrorism.

Several weeks ago, we marked the five-year anniversary of the blackest day in American history, and the President gave us that Alfred E. Newman, dork-ass expression, and the Krusty the Clown explanation.

“Don’t blame me! I didn’t do it!”

Now, as the story is breaking about one of their own coming on to teenaged boys, we are learning the Republican leadership was warned it was happening and chose to ignore it. Doesn’t it remind anyone of the same thing they did when they ignored warnings that 9/11 was about to happen?

So what do they do? They go over and suck up to the Taliban.

What’s next?

Will they make an effort to smooch the unpleasant derriere of Mr. Bin Laden? Will they ask the world’s number one Republican to send over some more of his minions to fly some more planes into some more buildings? “We’ve got lots of planes, Mr. Bin Laden, Sir. We have more tall buildings. Take us off the front page and put your own far less than handsome countenance there, instead of ours.”

It’s out of hand and something has to change. But, it’s been out of hand for a long time and nothing seems to be changing, except our government is getting bolder in their shenanigans. It’s like they think they can do anything they want and we’re not going to do anything about it.

And, they are probably right.

At least that’s the way it looks from here in Jimbo’s world.

congress is "all in" with a rag hand

Tennessee is sort of on my mind this morning. My father died fifteen years ago today. My father was born in Tennessee and my relatives from my father’s side came from Tennessee. My ex-wife’s mother came from Tennessee, as did Chris Moneymaker, who won the 2003 World Series of Poker. Moneymaker has generally been given credit for the online poker boom and the popularity of the rebirth of poker in the world and especially in the United States. Moneymaker won his way into the WSOP by means of an online satellite poker tournament. Bill Frist, also of Tennessee, was instrumental on Friday of this week, attaching legislation to ban online poker to a bill in congress to improve port security.

I have two opinions about the legislation. First, if there really are any terrorists who are not in the employ of the Bush administration—and I believe there are—they will continue to try to attack us, and congressional legislation to stop them by safeguarding our ports five years after it should have been done won’t be effective. Second, I will continue to play poker, as will most of the people currently doing it.

I took a new job a couple of months ago and I have been putting in some extra hours, so I haven’t been playing much poker lately. I haven’t won anything significant since before the WSOP in July. I was somehow lucky enough to be sought out by a headhunter who placed me with the top company in the world in our industry. I’ve been putting in a few extra hours at work so I can learn a very complex new business and so I can do my job better. Consequently, I haven’t been able to spend as much time playing poker online as I used to and I haven’t actually stared someone down across the felt, in person, in over fifteen months. You may have noted also that I haven’t had time to update my blogsite as often, lately.

We’ll get the job down to forty hours a week someday, just like we took the last job we had from a fifty-hour-a-week, uncontrolled catastrophe to a state of almost transcendental calm in less than a year. That is, unless this job continues to be as much fun, and we may want to find reasons to stay longer each day.

I can’t help but feel that once the Bush administration and the Republicans in congress drained all the money from the treasury and put it in their pockets and there was none left, they saw that money was changing hands on the poker tables and wanted to get a cut. These grafters make us long for the good old days when the conservatives were respectable men like Barry Goldwater and Dwight Eisenhower. These were men with whom we would disagree on the fringes, but we would not be concerned they would try to steal our wallet.

And, on this sunny and warm day, not all that different than the one fifteen years ago today, I can’t help but remember that my father believed that the President and Congress were all rascals. I’m beginning to think he was right.

At least that’s our take here in Jimbo’s world.

cover story

The cover story in yesterday’s Kansas City Star Magazine was about the company at which I am employed.

It is a very good and in-depth article and it give a good feel for what we do.

If you are local and have access to it, you might want to take a look.

true lies and false truths

Is it a lie when someone tells you something you believe and you tell someone else, and then later you find out what you were told was wrong?

For example, where I work, we have contracted to complete a sports arena in Tulsa. I spoke to a man in Tulsa last week who wants to supply us some of the materials for this arena. He told me the arena had been designed by I. M. Pei. He dismissed Pei’s contribution offhand and acted as if Pei was just one of those liberal easterners (or perhaps far-easterners) and seemed to indicate to me that he was unimpressed.

I sort of expected the next thing he was going to say was that the arena “Was like a scar on the face of Tulsa,” much as Bezo Fache, the French police detective had dismissed Pei’s glass pyramid at the Louvre, in the book The Da Vinci Code.

Anyway, I went in and looked through the engineering drawings and thought the huge glass wall of the façade of the arena reminded me of the glass pyramid, so I told a couple of people that I had been told that Pei was the architect. No one seemed to know any different, so my lie took on a new verisimilitude.

I came home from work that night and started doing my research to see how many other projects we had in works that were designed by I. M. Pei. In doing my due diligence, I was somewhat surprised to find that what I had been told was dead wrong. The designer of the building was actually Cesar Pelli. Now, Pelli is no slouch. He designed the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malasia, which were briefly the tallest buildings in the world. It was necessary, however, for me to go back to work the next day and correct the error.

By the way, here is a picture of the events center. You can see why I believed it was designed by Pei if you look at the glass wall and entry. Click on the image once and the resulting picture is larger and clearer.





I guess the whole point of this rambling is that if we are told something and we believe it is true, then it stays true in our minds until someone comes along and corrects our error. Reality, as I say frequently, is only what it appears to be. If we believe something enough, then it is true—at least in our own minds. If no one ever comes along with the truth, we may go to our graves with “true lies” and believe them as solidly as we believe in the earth and the sky.

Reality is dynamic and we have to keep working on it until we get it right.

At least that is the goal, here in Jimbo’s world.

ode on intimations of immortality

On Thursday night I had a chance to play some one-on-one half court basketball with my son, as is our custom practice and, as is customary, he beat me two out of three games. I had a lead in the first game, but he came back and won. I had my three-ball in the second game, so he had to come outside the arc to guard me and I was able to take him inside a couple of times when I caught him moving out to cover the long ball. The threat of my going inside got me a couple of looks from beyond the arc and I hit them, solidifying the victory. I’m embarrassed to say that in the third and final game—the one for the money—I failed to hit a single shot. I don’t expect to win, because he is much better than I am, but I ought to have been able to hit a shot.

The thing I came away with though, is the fact that my son is obviously my son. He is like me in so many ways that I realized that some of me has rubbed off on him. When we shot around before starting to play we had a long talk about life and jobs and houses and money and relationships—in general the little things that life is made of. I realized that my son had taken on many of my own values and some of my personality.

It is our purpose in life to pass on our genetics to our offspring. That is a biological function and we do it instinctively. What makes civilization, however, is that we pass along our behavioral characteristics as well. Long after I am gone that part of me will continue to live on. And, maybe, if he chooses, that part will be passed along to someone not yet thought of—both genetically and characteristically—and the lineage will continue.

For the present, however, if you ever find yourself on the court guarding my son, make sure you stay between him and the basket. If he gets inside—within seven feet of the hole—you can’t stop him. If he picks up the dribble, plan on getting a hand in his face as quick as you can. If he gets off an open shot, you are probably wasting your time looking for a rebound.

At least that is our advice here in Jimbo’s world.

a disappearance and a re-appearance

If you wondered where I had gone, well, I had another computer problem.

They changed my format at my blogsite and I couldn't log in for a while.

I finallly figured it out today and I am returned to life.

At least, I think.

a miracle! a chocolate miracle

Just when you think that the world is going to hell in a hand basket and that Armageddon is just around the corner, a miracle comes along and all is right with the world. I believe it was the Beatles who presaged this miracle in their song Let It Be.






When I find myself in times of trouble
Mother Mary comes to me
Speaking words of wisdom
Let it be

Well, it seems that the Virgin Mary has shown up in California, of all places, giving us a sign that all is well.

“Oh, Jimbo,” many of you are saying right now, “the Virgin Mary is showing up on highway underpasses and cheese sandwiches from coast to coast all the time. You have never seemed all that interested in the sightings before.”

This time it’s different. This time she is chocolate.

The image of the Virgin Mary was found under a vat of chocolate at a California chocolate factory, and those of us who practice the chocolate faith believe. Yes, we believe.

While I may not be all that spiritual most of the time, when it comes to worshiping the holy chocolate, I will be the first to fall on my knees and put the dark brown confection to my lips.

This incident, however, puts our faith in conflict. Now we have to decide whether to pause for a moment of quiet reverence, or to take a bite out of her head. I guess this is what they meant when they said our faith would be tested. They never said life was going to be easy.

At least not for the true believers here in Jimbo’s world.

so far, so good

One day down at my new job and all’s well. Everyone went out of their way to make me feel comfortable. I have a brand new desk, a brand new office and a brand new desktop computer with a flat panel monitor. So far I’m happier than swine in defecation.

The boss took me and a group of other people out to lunch to a really nice place. We had a great meal; a nice conversation and everyone seemed relaxed.

When she came home from work last night, Jimbo’s girlfriend asked me if I had a hard first day. The only honest answer I could provide was, “No.”

I realize that one cannot make a conclusion after such a short period of time, but I am thinking, so far, so good.

We’ll keep everyone updated, here in Jimbo’s world.

hell freezes over, again

While it may seem impossible to believe, the extended vacation I was planning to go on next week has been sidelined. I got a job offer Wednesday and they want me right away, so I go to work Monday.

It looks to be a really good job with a really good company with the highest base salary I’ve ever started with on a new job. When the headhunter I was working with made me the offer, he added up the bonuses and the benefits and told me the total package was worth annually about $25K more than I’m making, now. Of course, he didn’t know that the company where I am working doesn’t pay anyone anything, so when I declined the offer and asked for more money, he asked what it was I didn’t like about the job and/or the offer. I told him it was fine, but I just needed more money. The company generously agreed to give it to me.

Years ago I received a job offer for a company and I countered with a request for more money. They agreed and hired me. The entire time I worked for the company, the vice-president to whom I reported told everyone that they hired me because I asked for more money. He said that anyone who was not satisfied with the first offer was the kind of man he wanted working for him. I never asked him what they would have done had I accepted their first offer, without negotiation.

Therefore, when I asked for more money on Wednesday, I didn’t do it for me. The initial offer was fine. I did it for my new employer. I wanted them to know just exactly whom they had brought on board. I wanted them to know they were getting their money’s worth. Now, starting Monday, I get a chance to prove it.

Looking for work is a full time job, as I have said before. Starting today, I have only one full time job, and I have it for one more day. Starting Monday, I’ll have only one full-time job, so maybe I’ll have more time to blog.

At least, that is the plan here in Jimbo’s world.

mid-year update

Many of you are probably wondering where Jimbo has gone.

“Did Jimbo die?” many of you have asked yourself. “And, why wasn’t I invited to the funeral?”

No, Jimbo is alive and well. I’ve just been busy. Looking for work is a full time job and I have an actual full time job besides, although I am scheduled to be terminated two weeks from Friday, so maybe I’ll have more time to be regular, here. However, Jimbo’s girlfriend has some “honey do” projects for me should I reach my termination date without having secured constructive employment.

I bought a new car in May—at Toyota Yaris. It is MP3 compatible, with a docking port for my MP3 player. Someday I may get an MP3 player, but it is not in my immediate plans. It is a nice car and I’m really liking it.

Many of you are probably asking why a man without employment prospects is buying a new car. “Are you buying a boat and a vacation home too, Jimbo?” those same people are asking.

Ha. Ha.

Well, I just felt like it, and that was a good enough reason.

It’s time to have breakfast, shower and go to work, so that is all for this morning, here in Jimbo’s world.

three squares for mr. hussein

Some days I wake up glad that I am not a lawyer. I wake up every day glad that I am not a lawyer representing Saddam Hussein. It seems that not a day goes by when you don’t hear about one of Saddam’s lawyers, from his trial in Iraq, being executed. I would imagine it is difficult to keep a quality legal team together when they are all getting killed.

In the news today is a story detailing the extent of the hunger strike on which Saddam went to protest the killing of his attorney. Here is the story along with a picture of the former Iraqi president smiling for the camera:

A square meal for an Iraqi dictator

Anyway, it appears that Saddam missed lunch on Thursday, but he was able to put his anger aside in time to have dinner. I think Saddam went hungry long enough. When everyone hates you, nobody cares if you are not eating regularly. The truth of the matter is I can’t see that a hunger strike is a useful instrument of protest. Maybe he should make up a sign saying that the unstable political climate of Iraq is unfair to lawyers. Perhaps he should get one of those lapel pins that look like a twisted ribbon and draw the scales of justice on it with a magic marker. People would look at the pin and figure that Saddam was just like us. Now that would be effective.

Except then some dipstick would see it and start mass-producing them, and larger magnetic ones for your car and refrigerator and putting them up for sale in every gas station, convenience store and supermarket and everywhere else impulse purchases were made. People would get them confused with the ones for good causes and before long we’d all have symbols of support for Saddam and his lawyers plastered all over our lapels and cars.

Jesus! What have I started, here? Forget I said anything.

Saddam, if you’re reading this today, please understand that your skipping meals to protest the loss of your attorneys is an extremely effective tool of protest. Just keep doing it and I think it will serve dramatically to get your point across, and save food, besides.

At least that’s our thought, here in Jimbo’s world.

from fat to slim and back

Last year, after I broke my finger, I quit playing basketball for about six months. The result was that I gained weight. Even when I started playing again, the weight stayed with me. I began to realize the extra twenty-five pounds I was carrying was going to eat into my life expectancy, so I decided to lose weight. I cut back on my intake of sugar and reduced the amount of food I ate, in general.

I’m happy to report that I have lost weight. I regret to inform you, however, that the twenty-five pounds I have lost so far were only fifteen. I went from 205 to 180 in just a matter of a month or six weeks. At least, I thought I did. When I weighed anywhere other than home, I was 190 pounds. Jimbo’s girlfriend cleared up the mystery last weekend when she pointed out to me that I was reading our scale wrong. Despite the fact that the line on the dial points at a large 180, the line actually is the increment for 190.

So I take back what I told many of you about my losing twenty-five pounds. I’m hoping this is just a premature statement and I will be able to start saying it again in another month or so. Thank you to all of you who noticed my stomach is not as huge as it was six weeks ago. It’s nice to look down at my stomach and to be able to see something protruding from my anatomy below my stomach again—my feet.

In the meantime, I don’t foresee Jimbo’s girlfriend changing her hairstyle to look like Myrna Loy, nor do I envision us getting a dog named Asta.

For the time being, however, I’m the not-as-fat man, here in Jimbo’s world.

dead presidents of questionable achievement

I had a chance last Sunday to talk to a fellow job seeker about his job search and we compared notes. While I’m looking for more of a managerial position, my friend Jonathan is looking for something more entry-level, since he is only eighteen. He also needs to find something within walking distance of his mother’s house, as he doesn’t have a car. His mother lives in the state capitol and Jonathan described to me the places he has applied and the names of the streets on which his potential places of employment are located. Not only will Jonathan be starting out on the ground floor, he will potentially be working on some street named after a president of the United States—and not top-ranked presidents, at that. Let me take you on a tour of his neighborhood—the mean streets of Capitol City-- from east to west.

Van Buren Street- Named after Martin Van Buren, a president whose native tongue was Dutch. In my reading about him, I found his nickname was Old Kinderhook (pretty catchy, huh?) and he was a fan of George Clinton. His picture makes it appear as if he had some kind of a white guy’s version of an Afro-Sheen blow out kit. I thought that maybe he wore his hair like that to emulate George Clinton, but I think the George Clinton with whom he was tight was not the one whose music we all know and love, as his presidency was more than 150 years before our George Clinton began recording.

Harrison Street- Named after William Henry Harrison, who was the oldest man elected to be president until Ronald Reagan. His picture indicates he had a big-assed nose. He also served only 30 days before he died. Some logic is starting to appear in these street names. As we go west, the streets are named after successive presidents. Harrison was succeeded by Topeka Blvd.

Topeka Blvd.- What the hell? There was never a president named Topeka Blvd. How did that one get in there?

Tyler Street- Named after John Tyler, the guy who pushed Topeka Blvd. out of the way and succeeded Harrison. It appears he was Harrison’s vice-president and was never re-elected, serving only four years. It looks as though his most important act as president was to meet his second wife and marry her while in office. Did fireworks go off when he met her? You bet. He met her at a ceremony during which a cannon exploded, killing two members of his cabinet and the father of his eventual bride.

Polk Street- Named after James Knox Polk, a guy who was ranked in the top ten presidents based on the research I read. I guess I’ll have to rag on him for the sort-of-mullet haircut he had. It is hard to describe, so try to look up his picture.

Taylor Street- Named after Zachary Taylor, who was known as Old Rough and Ready, apparently because he wore rumpled clothes and a straw hat, and not because of his sexual prowess. He only served sixteen months before he died in office and was succeeded by Western Ave.

Western Ave.- How did jump in line ahead of all the other dead presidents? Who named these streets, anyway?

Fillmore Street- Named after Millard Fillmore, who succeeded Taylor when he died. Fillmore served as president less than three years and when it came time for re-election, his party, the Whigs, failed to nominate him, so he ran for president on the ticket of the Know Nothing party. Now, we have had some presidents who arguably didn’t know anything, but I would propose that having “know nothing” written by your name on the ballot would not be a plus come election day.

Clay Street- Named for some guy named Clay, I guess. Logic would dictate that this street should be named for Franklin Pierce, the next president. I assume that it is because Pierce was a democrat and this is a republican state capitol.

Buchanan Street- Named for James Buchanan, who preceded Abraham Lincoln. Buchanan appears to be a man who did not enjoy his work. He told Lincoln on Honest Abe’s inauguration day, “If you are as happy entering the presidency as I am leaving it, then you are truly a happy man.”

My conclusion that Jonathan’s neighborhood is a grid of streets named for presidents whose achievements are not as well noted and accepted as those of some of our other, more illustrious presidents. And into this grid of streets, someone whose feel for history has allowed the naming of several streets to add to the asymmetry of the mean streets of capitol city. Maybe, it will allow, years from now, for someone to insert the name of another unremarkable man. Bush Street! I like the sound.

As for Jonathan and me, we’ll continue to pound the pavement, looking for that opportunity to end his unemployment and to keep me from entering mine.

At least that is our hope, here in Jimbo’s world.

the hygiene hypothesis

Recently, Jimbo’s girlfriend made a comment that sort of got me wondering. She complained that the house was not as clean as it should be and somehow hinted that this was a recent occurrence and that the house used to be clean. My reaction to her comment was to connect my being here with the dirt, and that somehow the lack of cleanliness was my fault.

Those who have known me for a long time probably remember that when I lived in my own house the place was immaculate and dust or dirt was never to be found. Okay, maybe I was not a perfect housekeeper, but my house was very clean.

Okay, okay! I would clean the house occasionally.

Today, however, I read a story on Yahoo! Which hypothesizes that perfect cleanliness may not be the best thing for human longevity. Anyway, here is the story.

You dirty rat.

The story says that rats that live in unsanitary conditions in the wild have better immune systems than rats in the lab that live in ultra-clean conditions. Because those feral rats are exposed to dirt and bacteria at an early age, they aren’t as prone to the maladies that plague those of us who live in pristine environments. Scientists refer to this as the hygiene hypothesis, and their assertion is that our clean living could be responsible for our high rate of allergies and asthma, type 1 diabetes and arthritis.

If this theory is correct, it may mean that we need a paradigm change in our lifestyle. Perhaps we should teach our children not to wash their hand after going to the restroom. Maybe we should encourage our children to play in the dirt. Maybe we should invite some germs to dinner.

For the time being, though, we’re going to save this argument for the next time our girlfriend implies that anything disorderly around our abode may be related to yours truly. I will use the tactic that I am trying to make life healthier for her.

At least, that is the plan here in Jimbo’s world.

words we understand about words we don't

I have a problem this afternoon and I am in a quandary. I find myself agreeing with the President. Many of you feel that if the president said a piece of paper before him was white, I would say it is black. Many of you feel that I would disagree with anything the President said, just to be disagreeable. That is not true. I disagree with almost everything the President says because he is usually wrong. Today is an exception.

President Bush said today that immigrants need to speak in English. I heartily agree. I’m tired of sitting on the phone trying to navigate through an automated receptionist only to be told, “Press one for English. Press two for Spanish.” And then the voice goes on to say something in Espanol that I do not understand. At that point I begin to think:

“Is she making fun of me? Is she saying, ‘For those who don’t speak Spanish, you can kiss my large behind?’”

I just wish people would talk in English, so you could understand them.

I remember seeing a story on the news last night about Dan El-Padilla, a classics student and a recent graduate of Princeton University. He just happens to be an illegal alien. He seems to be an extremely articulate young man, and according to his professors, he is a genius, or close to it. He was even the class salutatorian. Where I fault the young man, however, is that he gave the salutatorian address in Latin. Who the hell delivers a speech in Latin, that no one can understand? Okay, most of you would have understood him, but despite my occasional use of Latin, even I don’t speak it. It would take some sort of deus ex machina for me ever to learn to speak it fluently.

Like the President, it is our belief if you are going to live here, you need to speak English, rather than ramble on in some tongue where you could be disrespecting us, and most of us would never know. Most certainly not the President.

At least that’s how we look at it in Jimbo’s world.

phil hellmuth, jr. relaxing while not being pressured by jimbo
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getting bad with the bad boy of poker

I sat across the table from arguably the best poker player in the world today.

It is Player appreciation weekend at Ultimatebet.com and Phil Hellmuth, Jr., the bad boy of poker is making surprise appearances at tables throughout the weekend. I was sitting at a $.25- .50 no limit table with two or three other players, when guess who shows up. He sat directly across from me and we went heads up three times. Twice, I was on a draw and he raised me big on the turn and I threw them away. The time I will tell everyone about (and as I get older, the story will get better) I had Jack/Queen of clubs and I raised fifty cents. Phil was on the big blind and he called me, as did someone else. I had a flush draw and straight draw on the flop and Phil checked. I raised fifty cents and he called. I hit the nut straight on the turn and bet again and he called again. The river was a rag, so I missed my flush, but I had the nut straight and there was no hand that could beat me. The board didn’t pair and there were no more than two of any suit on the board. To non-players, that means the straight was the best hand. The straight to the ace, which I had, is the best available hand in that circumstance. Players like Phil and I would call it, therefore, the nut straight, or, in shorthand, the nuts.

I bet big and Phil came back over the top. The third guy folded. I went all in and Phil called. Phil turned over JQ off suit and we split the pot.

I told him I’d tell my grandchildren that I went heads up with Phil Hellmuth and I didn’t lose. If he replied, I couldn’t tell. There were twenty people waiting in line to get on the table and two hundred observers and everyone was chatting.

I sent Ultimatebet an e-mail and asked if the player I had played was poker’s bad boy. They replied that according to their records, I had, indeed been playing this afternoon with Mr. Hellmuth.

I tell anyone who will listen that I absolutely don’t like Phil Hellmuth when I see him on TV. He was anything but a jerk this afternoon. Maybe I’ll have to change my mind about him.

I'm sure that Phil reads my blog regularly for tips to help keep his game sharp. The following is a special message just to Phil. I took it easy on you this afternoon, but look out next time, because I'll be playing for real.

At least around the table and here in Jimbo’s world.

another poker tournament

By having a blog, I qualify for an annual poker tournament. While many of you may think this is a shameless attempt to do anything to get into a tournament without having to pay any money, you'd be right. By putting this thing on my blog I get a free entry. If you blog and want to enter, you can too.

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker!

This Online Poker Tournament is a No Limit Texas Holdem event exclusive to Bloggers.

Registration code: 7330476

maid of the seas
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a joke? a fairy tale, or the truth?

I read this today on Yahoo!

Am I lost in some distant reality or is there something I don't understand?

Read it on the link below.

Presidential administrations gone wild

the colonel, the idiot and the maid of the seas

Once upon a time there was a graceful bird that was known by everyone as the Maid of the Seas. The Maid of the Seas was sleek and beautiful and she carried people across the ocean and brought them safely back home.

In the same period of time, there was an evil dictator who tortured and killed his people and spread his violence to all of the other countries in his region. He hated the United States. Some might have said that he hated our freedom, but he didn’t give a crap about our freedom. As a matter of fact, he probably would have laughed had anyone suggested he hated our freedom. He probably would have said that anyone who said he hated our freedom was some kind of dope, and he would have been right.

“Oh, Mother Goose,” many of you are probably saying, “You’re talking about that awful Saddam Hussein, aren’t you?”

No, children, I’m talking about someone who was so much worse than Saddam that he made Saddam look like, well, some kind of pussycat. I’m talking about a man who called himself “the Colonel.”

“Wait a cotton-picking minute, you Mother,” some of you are saying right now. “If you’re going to start bad-mouthing Colonel Harlan Sanders, you’d better bet that we’re going to open a king-sized can of whup ass.”

No! No! No! I would expect to have my ass whipped if I spoke irreverently about Colonel Sanders. I’d welcome it, because I would deserve it. I’m talking about Muammar Qaddafi, one of the lowest-life pieces of crap you’d never want to meet.

Anyway, the Colonel saw the Maid of the Seas carrying Americans from one side of the pond to the other and it ticked him off. He sent his henchmen to bring her down. It was a few days before Christmas—a holiday the Colonel disrespected—when his secret police brought down the Maid of the Seas, killing her and the Americans she carried. This atrocity would remain the worst act of terrorism against Americans until that sunny September morning in 2001.

Many years later, in that great country which was to have been the destination of the Maid of the Seas, the third character in our fairy tale, the Idiot, sought to be the leader. Somebody pulled some serious shenanigans, miscounted some votes and the Idiot was “elected” to be the leader.

The Idiot wasn’t smart enough to do the job he was elected to do, so he had some of his terrorist friends knock down a couple of buildings on that previously-mentioned September morning and his people were so frightened they would eventually make the mistake of electing him again.

Then the Idiot started a war and de-stabilized another foreign country, giving the terrorists a place to run around and do what terrorists do. There were as many terrorists there as there were maggots in a steaming pile of dog feces warming under the August sun. If one were to ignite a flare in that country in the dark of the night, it would illuminate scores of terrorists scurrying across the desert floor, like cockroaches spotlighted by a sixty-watt light in an urban tenement kitchen.

The Idiot had made the world a haven for terrorists, but he still was not happy. What could he do, he asked himself, to aid and abet yet another terrorist?

The Idiot went to the office of his second-in-command—a man who was known as Shotgun, after the weapon he loved to discharge when he had gotten a few drinks in him. Shotgun was cleaning his namesake weapon when the Idiot paused outside his office. The Idiot was careful to announce himself before entering Shotgun’s office so as not to take a load of birdshot in his smirking countenance, as Shotgun was known to shoot from the hip (first, and ask questions later).

“I want to bring the Colonel into the fold. I want to restore diplomatic relations with him and his country,” said the Idiot. “He was the one who brought down the Maid of the Seas.”

“They say that the camel jockey used Semtex,” said Shotgun. He racked his signature weapon and added, “Give me this baby and a pint of Old Granddad and I could’ve done her just as good.”

“So we’ll do it, then,” said the Idiot.

“Sure as hell,” said Shotgun. “Now hand me that bottle from inside the top drawer.”

So the Idiot decided to make friends with yet another terrorist, because one never knows how much help one will need if the other party ever gets into power. And so the Idiot, the Colonel and Shotgun became fast friends. Legend has it that even to this day, if you listen really closely, you can hear the three of them, firing away, blasting their empty bottles full of birdshot.

From the looks of things, my children, this appears to be one of those fairy tales where not everyone lives happily ever after.

crack the code. crash the symbols

A woman’s reputation is besmirched by people spreading falsehoods. The man who knows the truth is murdered. As he is dying, he leaves clues that only a few people can decipher. The clues lead us through a mystery that has more twists and turns than a roller coaster.

Oh, by the way, did I mention the woman was God’s daughter-in-law?

Despite the fact that The Da Vinci Code has been on the bestseller list for a year, Jimbo just got around to reading it last week. I mentioned that the movie based on this book was coming out later this month, and a friend who had the book loaned it to me.

Thanks, Tim.

Anyway, if any of you are among the few who haven’t read the book, I would suggest getting it on to your “to do” list as soon as you can. This is the best book I have read in a while.

The Da Vinci Code is about a college professor, Robert Langdon, who writes a manuscript about symbolism in which is a key to unlock a secret that has been protected for decades by sinister society. When a curator at the Louvre in Paris, who is a member of the secret society, is killed, he leaves clues for Langdon to help lead him to discover the secret. The police interpret his clues as an accusation that Langdon killed him, so throughout the book, Langdon is running from the law, trying to find the solution.

We find that Leonardo DaVinci was once a member of the secret society and the primary clue left by the curator is to lie on the floor mimicking the drawing of the Vitruvian Man, Da Vinci’s famous sketch detailing the relationship between anatomy and mathematics.

Langdon is aided by the granddaughter of the curator, who is a code expert, and by combining their expertise, they are able to twist their way through this suspense novel.

This is definitely on my “recommended” list, and I’m looking forward to seeing the movie later this month.

At least, that’s our opinion here in Jimbo’s world.

pair of jokers
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bush squared
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drawing to a couple of jokers

This morning a story about a couple of jokers is on my mind.

“Oh, Jimbo,” many of you are asking, “Do we have to hear more about your poker exploits?”

To which I answer, no, this isn’t about poker at all. By the way, the games I play don’t have any wild cards. This is about Dubya and some other joker. Here, read the story.

Bush and the joker

I guess that Bush addressed the White House Correspondent’s Association last night and he brought along Bush impersonator Steve Bridges to translate what he said. It was a lot of laughs for everyone. Yet, I wonder if it has sunk to the point that even Bush knows he can no longer be taken seriously.

I am a proponent of humor as an aid to get all of us through the tough times, but I am concerned that we may all chuckle at Bush, the comedian, while the business of government is not done and the sanctity of democracy is undone. Much as Nero fiddled while Rome burned, Dubya ridicules himself as the things we hold as important are incinerated and their ashes are scattered by the winds of history.

Someone once said it takes a big man to laugh at himself, but I wonder whether the person that said that had some joker standing beside him, mocking him at the time. While Dubya becomes the Homer Simpson of American politics, the rest of us can laugh all the way to the poorhouse. I, for one, think it’s time for Bush to take himself seriously. After all, he is the President, and not some nitwit out to get some laughs by making a fool of himself, or am I wrong about that?

At least, that’s what we think, here in Jimbo’s world.

i'll have potent potables for $20 please, art

Why is it that no one can pronounce the word “potable” correctly?

One of the panelists on Real Time with Bill Maher last night was talking about the infrastructure in Iraq and the difficulty of getting drinking water available to everyone and mispronounced the word. She pronounced it with the short vowel sound as in pot, rather than the long vowel sound as in potent.

Perhaps you remember me bitching about the mispronunciation of this word in the far distant past.

http://jimboandhisfriends.blogspot.com/2005/02/rose-by-any-other-name.html

“What is the big deal?” many of you are asking. “The important part is that we know what the word means, and that we understand the necessity of potable water to survival.”

Someday, in a dynamic language like our own, the short vowel mispronunciation will probably become acceptable and old fossils like myself who pronounce it right will probably be considered—well, fossils. We’ll be considered a relic of some past civilization that doesn’t exist anymore—dinosaurs who clung to the old pronunciation and were rendered extinct because of our inability to adapt.

Someday in the distant future, archeologists will dig up my remains and date me by the configuration of my jawbone.

“You can tell,” one will speculate, “that this ancient being was from the early 21st century, and his mouth likely pronounced the word “potable” with the long vowel sound.”

“Yes,” replies his associate. “And he probably couldn’t levitate, either.”

“He surely held onto his dated ways and beliefs and was relegated to the dust of history.”

“Yeah. What a toad.”

This chilling tale of our distant future could likely come to pass a long time from now in Jimbo’s world.

i've got your number(s)

I don’t know about you, but I have too many numbers to remember. It’s finally gotten out of hand and I have to say something about it.

First of all, I read on Yahoo! this morning that they are considering adding a new domain name. The new suffix would be .tel, and it would give one a domain name to store all of their numbers. The domain would primarily be for saving phone numbers, e-mail addresses, websites, etc. Reading this story got me thinking about how many numbers we have and a number of other things, too.

People ask me, “Jimbo, what’s you cell phone number?”

I answer them, “I don’t know, but hang on. I’ve got it written down somewhere.”

Also, don’t ask me Jimbo’s girlfriend’s cell phone number, or my son’s or my mom’s. Fortunately, someone had the foresight to invent the address book for cell phones or computers. Otherwise I’d be lost in the ozone if I had to call anyone.

And what about my personal finances? I have IRAs, 401(k)s, a Roth, brokerage accounts and checking accounts, all of which have different user names and passwords to access. And I have a couple of credit cards I manage online. Every one of them has some unique requirement so I can’t use the same names and numbers to access them. I also visit several other password-protected websites, requiring several other unique numbers, like the website I go to publish this blog.

And then I go to work. When I sign on to my computer there, I have a master log in user name and password. Then, my e-mail and the manufacturing software have their own unique numbers.

And what’s the deal with manufacturing software packages and business software? Who was the genius who decided that the log ins all had be case sensitive and one has to log in lower case? But every manufacturing software system I’ve ever used requires that you be in upper case to operate it. I find myself typing numbers and words into the cells in the software, getting done the necessary keystrokes that keep this county working and make this country great. Then, I toggle back to my e-mail and see someone needs a reply, and when I reply to them, I realize that I am yelling, still in upper case.

And who was the genius who decided that we had to change our passwords at work every thirty days for “security” reasons? Is the purpose of doing this to bore potential hackers to death? If a hacker got hold of a list of my user names and passwords, he (or she) would have a long list to read. Presumably, sometime before the end of the list, their eyes would start to get heavy and they would drift off into a boredom-induced slumber.

I’m thinking the new .tel domain may be a good idea as a tool to help us remember all of those numbers, but won’t it be another login name and number we’ll have to remember?

At least that’s our concern here in Jimbo’s world.

the "inside" scoop

Last weekend Jimbo and his girlfriend saw the movie Inside Man. If you are thinking about seeing a movie today, and can’t decide which one, I’d recommend you see this one.

First of all, there is a great cast. Usually one can’t go wrong seeing a movie if Denzel Washington is in it. I first noticed Clive Owen as “the driver” in those wild-assed BMW commercials. You remember the ones. They also starred Don Cheadle, Little Richard, James Brown, Marilyn Manson, F. Murray Abraham, and many more. Any movie with Owen in it is also worth seeing. Jody Foster and Christopher Plummer were also good in this movie.

And, of course, if Spike Lee is the director, it’s likely to be something one doesn’t want to miss. I’ve been a fan of Spike Lee ever since he played the character Mars Blackmon and directed She’s Gotta Have It way back in 1986. I enjoyed School Daze, Do The Right Thing, Summer
of Sam and my favorite has always been He Got Game, also with Denzel Washington.

In Inside Man, the story is about Owen’s character, with a group of accomplices, robbing a bank and Washington playing the police detective who matches wits with him. There is a standoff with Owen holding a number of hostages and Washington trying to diffuse the situation. Of course, we find out that Owen’s goal is not the money, but the principal of the thing, although he ends up considerably more wealthy than he starts out.

As in He Got Game, Lee uses the technique of the full-screen close-up, focused in so tightly on the faces of his actors that we can see any flaw or blemish. Washington and Owen are engaged throughout most of the movie in a psychological duel—both trying to gain the upper hand. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you about some of the good parts, because it might spoil the movie for you. You’ll just have to trust me on this one.

Because we’d never lead you astray here in Jimbo’s world.

crazy

It appears the charges against the Christian in Afghanistan I discussed a couple of days ago have been dropped. I consider this to be a victory for democracy everywhere, but it sounds as if the charges were dropped because the court decided the guy was crazy, rather than dropping them because it was the correct and just thing to do. I would like to believe that the Afghans read my recent blog and it helped to sway their opinion, but, in truth, I don’t think that many people in the Afghan government read this blog. And my blog was not aimed at them, anyway.

In the story I read about this today, Condoleezza Rice was quoted as saying that “we need to be respectful of Afghan sovereignty.”

Wait a minute! Didn’t we go into Afghanistan and put into place the mechanisms for them to “elect” the sitting government? Didn’t the Afghans “choose” to put into place the government that is willing to kill this brother because he believes differently than the religious right in his country? Isn’t Afghan “sovereignty” something we put there in the first place?

Many of you are probably asking, “Jimbo, how many questions can you ask in one paragraph?” And then almost as many of you realize, “Oops. I just did it, too.”

Please cut yourselves some slack. It was Socrates who said, “Unexamined life is not worth living.”

It was the Socratic method to question everything. I’ve always thought you guys were a lot like Socrates, in that regard.

But, let’s get back to the subject at hand. I think it would have been better if the Afghans had said it was okay for this guy to be a Christian and worship his own God, instead of slipping out the back door by saying he was crazy. Perhaps this guy was just “crazy” about his God, and for any Christian that may be a good defense.

I contend that we would be crazy to assume that an Afghan theocracy would have the same separation of church and state that our own democracy enjoys and our constitution requires. We should celebrate the fact that we have that separation and pray we never allow ourselves to sink back to level of the Afghans. We’d be crazy to let that continue to happen here.

Are you with me on this one, or am I just crazy?

At least that is what we believe here in Jimbo’s world.

the trials of life

“Where have you been, Jimbo?” many of you are asking.

It seems like forever since I wrote something on this blogsite, but I just haven’t had anything important to say until today. What I have to say is that President Bush and I seem to be in complete agreement on something today.

In Afghanistan, there is a man on trial for converting to Christianity. Apparently, in Afghanistan, that is the most heinous thing one can do. If the man is convicted, he will be executed, as converting from Islam to Christianity in Afghanistan is punishable by death. I say it is wrong; Bush says it is wrong. It appears that we are in agreement on something.

Many of you are probably saying that something is wrong here. If Bush says something is right, I’m usually going to say it is wrong. If he says something is black, I’ll usually be saying it is white. So, when both of us seem to be on the same side, it has to be confusing to many of you. Don’t be concerned, however. By the time this is over, I’ll be suggesting our President has spit for brains.

We have been moving steadily for a number of years toward the acceptance of Christianity as our national religion. I don’t have a particular problem with Christianity. If the truth were known, if they divided us all up into individual groups, you’d probably find me in with the Christians. The problem I have is making Christianity our national religion. You may recall that many of the early settlers of this country came here for the purpose of worship as they chose and to escape a nationalized religion. The founding fathers wrote into our bylaws the freedom to worship as we please. They were willing to fight for what they believed in and were willing to do violence to those who would take away those religious freedoms. I would like to believe that if those founding fathers were around today, they would take offense with those who would try to amend the constitution to include their religious beliefs. I would expect that they would willingly slaughter those of the religious right who would mix their religion with governance, just as they slaughtered those who proposed the same course back in their time.

Anyway, what we have in Afghanistan is mixing religion and government. We like to brag here in the United States that we are conservative and we believe in God. In places like Afghanistan they are really conservative and they really believe in their God. They have thoroughly integrated their religion into their government and if one commits a sin, they break the law. They are the model of what our religious right tries to be, except they make the religious right here look like a bunch of pussies.

The truth is, we want to be a democracy or a republic, but we don’t want to be theocracy. We want to worship our God on the Sabbath and carry him (or her) with us during the week if we wish, but we don’t want to integrate him into our government and let our government play God. Otherwise, we might become another Afghanistan.

As for our President, let him worship all he wants, but Lord, grant him the wisdom to see that an American theocracy in no better than an Afghan theocracy. When the Afghans put a man on trial for converting to Christianity under the threat of execution, it makes them look really stupid. It provides evidence to back the argument that we are better than they are and our country, our rules of law and our way of life is better than theirs. I agree with our President that what they are doing in Afghanistan is wrong. I just hope he agrees with my side of the argument that we never, ever want to be like them.

At least that is our opinion here in Jimbo’s world.

the big (or maybe not so big) blow

I was an odd morning here at chez Jimbo’s girlfriend. We were up early and were reading the paper and were hearing thunder off in the distance. I turned on the weather channel, but they were not showing anything to be concerned about in our area. I went outside a couple of times to look at the sky. It was breezy, cool and overcast, but nothing looked threatening, so we came back in and read the want ads and the Best Buy advertisement.

My girlfriend asked, “Do you hear that? It sounds like sirens.”

I heard it, so I went outside again. I could hear warning sirens in the distance. One of the neighbor’s was putting her car in her garage and told me she heard there had been a tornado just west of us. I came inside and called my son, whose domicile would have been near the path of the tornado and he told me they were having large hail at his place.

I went to the West side of the house and looked out the sliding glass doors in time to see a wall cloud coming in.

We frequently have severe storms in the springtime here in the Midwest, but usually the storms come in the afternoon of a warm day. The temperature this morning was only 45 degrees, Fahrenheit, and it is still winter—too early for spring storms.

As I watched, a couple of sheets of newspaper floated by overhead—Frisbee-style—and the trees in the back yard started to sway in the wind. Then, a large number of leaves on and under a pin oak next door began to spin into a small vortex and the vortex came up on to our deck. It rattled the charcoal grille and as it passed across the deck, one of the patio chairs moved six inches. It was as if some ghost at some surreal bar-b-cue had sat down in it and pushed his chair up to the table. The vortex dispersed, the leaves scattered and it was all over.

It looks as if winter may have passed us by this year, but I wonder what excitement spring has in store for us.

It may be a long tornado season here in Jimbo’s world.

par for the course

Back in the day, when Jimbo was a young man, he did a little golfing. Despite putting some effort into learning the game, we were extremely unsuccessful and gave it up after a year or so, allowing our clubs to pass from our possession during a garage sale. The lesson with which I came away from the game was that the ball doesn’t always go where one envisions it will go. My putting was awful and the “strength” of my game was getting the ball on the green. The weakness of my game was the many times I hit the ball with my putter and it seemed to go places I hadn’t imagined.

All of which leads me to a story I read this morning. It seems that a Russian Cosmonaut at the International Space Station is going to hit a golf ball into orbit with a fairway iron, and the ball is going to have some kind of tracking device by which we can all watch it, on our computers, orbit the earth for years. It’s some kind of advertising promotion for a company that sells golf equipment, and their advertising dollars will infuse some needed cash into the Russian space program. Here is the story.

Golfing in space

One may recall the tagline from the 1979 movie Alien that was used in advertisements for the movie, “In space no one can hear you scream.”

When golf and outer space are brought together, the tagline would be something like, in space no one can hear you scream obscenities at your ball when it doesn’t go where you intend to hit it. And that is the concern some scientists have about this whole advertising gimmick. From what I read, there is some concern that our friendly cosmonaut, “Boris” Woods, may have difficulty getting the ball to go exactly where he wants it to go. The ball may obtain an orbit different than planned and join the other space junk out there, and it may become yet another collision in earth orbit just waiting to happen.

Let’s face it, many of us have at some time or other been sitting in front of a television set on a Sunday afternoon, living life as if every second counted, and seen a very talented professional golfer misplay a shot. I have a concern that Boris is apt to choke under the pressure and slice his six-iron shot into and orbit that will—after carrying a few million miles—bring it back into a collision course with the space station.

When Boris realizes he misplayed the ball he will say something in Russian that translates into, “&%$#!”

When the ball arrives back at the space station, Boris and his crewmembers will also swear Russian oaths. One of the space station crewmembers will tell Boris that he should have used the five-iron, and he will again swear oaths, in Russian.

Someone will suggest to Boris that he should have shouted, “Fore!”

And, at that suggestion, Boris will again swear oaths. Of course, there will be some money riding on the shot, as there always is in golf, and Boris will have to fork over a couple of rubles to one of his mates, who will smile and make a comment about the shot as he counts his money. Boris will swear oaths.

Many of you are probably wondering where I am going with this. I wonder, myself. I guess my point is that we should master the game here on terra firma before we try to take it to new and unexplored frontiers. And, if your golfing experiences are anything like my own, that means it will be many, many years before the little white ball should take a trip into outer space.

At least, that’s what we think here in Jimbo’s world.

look at the bright side

Now we find out that if you think positively and have an optimistic outlook, you have a better chance of living longer. This is the result of a study of 545 Dutch dudes. Here is the story.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060227/hl_nm/optimism_dc

You may recall that the study I cited earlier this evening about chocolate consumption leading to lower blood pressure was also a study of Dutch subjects.

This leads me to one inescapable conclusion. If you are optimistic about the possibility of getting some chocolate tonight, you’ll live longer. If your optimism is warranted and you actually do get some chocolate, your blood pressure will go down. If your blood pressure is down from eating chocolate, then you should live even longer.

I think I’m going to be optimistic that there is some chocolate downstairs, and perhaps I’ll live long enough to enjoy it. If that happens, the chocolate will be the elixir that feeds the cycle of good health.

The night is getting better and better here in Jimbo’s world.