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.