DEGENERATE GAMBLER CHRONICLES: episode ga frikkin Zillion!!!

I have a long & storied history with the gambled dollar.

So know you know.

There exists an adage; one shared among gamblers in the esteemed know. It must be understood. And it is by some few. Ignore it and you’re doomed. Still, most gamblers do. That’s why most gamblers are dumb bet sluts who will always lose.

It takes a classy & real smart bet slut like me to know: I must Bet To Win.

Read the adage again.

Bet To Win. Linguistic action is wound evenly in to the 3-word phrase’s entirety. Bet To Win. Verb. All go. I must bet to win.

Silent space between each word in the phrase passes precisely measured and too fast to see. Unless you’re hallucinating. Then absolute quietude may wrap in fast moving energy packets around the eyeballs. Whoa dudes; you can taste the silence. Not unlike the way you’ll imagine chocolate tastes when swallowed by your eyeballs. But…can you smoke it? Just then the chocolate silence eye lid whiff shimmies & morphs into an eye of its’ own & winks.

Makes the heart leap that silence; like silence spaced between 1 & 2 in the 1 & 2 & 1 & 2 & in a drumbeat.

The three words in the adage is like popping 3 speed pills at the same time. BAM! All at once. Or more like the cumulative effect of an evening’s first three beers; brilliantly interdependent, their sum greater in a mysterious way than the added worth of each part.

The third beer is when it gets awesome dudes!

Bet To Win. What does it mean — I must first bet in order to win?

No.

I must bet to win.

Dig?

I don’t always win but I want to. And raw want to win is the key.

Most people bet to gamble. They hope to lose as little as possible. They may not want to lose. But the House Always Wins.

You’ve heard that one right? House Always Wins. Rule.

They used to have a rule at amusement parks. Old ones, like Brooklyn’s Coney Island — which I was fortunate to visit this summer. Is Coney Island still open? Probably for another few days, that’s it. I think after this weekend Coney Island is doomed.

What a bummer. Never even got to ride the Cyclone. Though it has long been on the top of my list of Roller Coasters to Steal.

Anyway back when the wooden Cyclone roller coaster was built They had a rule. Not written. Written rules are much easier to break. You know where to find them!

Who here likes to break the law??

Whoo!!

Like how since it’s Expressly Forbidden by law all those illegally downloaded movies are more fun to watch.

But the rule at Coney Island was different; this was a law of Physics. Written? Not precisely. In fact it was considered so obviously true that it was inforced by & large with nary a mention.

Roller Coasters Don’t Go Upside Down. Unless there is a catastrophic accident.

Upside Down? Nope! Not Roller Coasters. They just don’t.

House Always Wins. Same deal. Rule was probably first made up alongside the ancient roulette wheel. The very first casino gamblers were informed that House Always Wins is intractably Truth. The rule has passed virally down, generation-to, from slut custie gamblers to their retard offspring.

That’s me!

But I — a dedicated life long rule breaker– aim to break that one rule above all.

Why?

Because I want to win. It’s my passion. That simple. I thus aim to win more than I lose. I must win. As must we all; if not as gamblers then at whatever it is you do.

Plus the rule is wrong. Bogus. Fraud-on its’ face Not true.

The house turns a profit. They are a business. This is America. Profit they should! But every time a bet is payed out the fact is: the house does not win. It loses.

I aim thus to prove irrefutable to anyone who cares that the House can & does constantly lose.

So we can win.

I aim to prove it thus because I am a teller of Truth.

Equine Assisted Mood Therapy

I didn’t bet Curlin to win yesterday’s Preakness Stakes. Because I was broke. I mentioned to a few friends at the Bar, while they labored over their own selections, that I thought Curlin would win. No one bet him, for understandable reasons. His odds were short. So there was no money in it, so to speak.

Curlin payed 3 to 1 — or $40 for every $10 bet. That’s actually plenty good for me. But like I said I was broke. So I couldn’t bet.

But I pegged him for the winner and he won — and so did I. Even though I didn’t win a dime. Because Curlin’s brilliant performance — and my success in predicting him — reminded me why I love a good horse race.

It’s good for my self esteem just to be right; that alone put me in a better mood.

If you haven’t noticed I like a good excuse to feel self-congratulatory.

But it was more than that. The race made my day because it was a cheap thrill ride to watch. Dig:

Welcome To The Monkey On My Back.

For speedWay readers who wonder how they can bet on the next Spun Cookie Race; or for that matter aren’t yet clear on what a Spun Cookie is…Here’s a good rule of thumb: the cookie has nothing to do with it. In fact I think that cookie has out-lived its’ usefulness.

Fuck cookies.

From now on: It’s 24/7 Spun Kookie races on the world famous open container speedWay!

Spread the word.

The question then is what is Spun?

Spun is like a perma-tilted pinball machine. Though the Game Over light keeps flashing the Credit counter, clearly malfunctioned, registers enough credits to provide free pinball until the 2010 mid-term elections. After that it plans to run for President.

Ever hear of a pinball game called Strange Torpedo? Me neither. I called the manufacturer to inquire about the machine’s origins. They told me that it was the only one of its kind.

Weird thing is even when the machine is unplugged the lights keep on a-flashing. It claims to pick up the extra credits in dimensions parallel to and equally as ‘real’ as our own. Quantum physisits insist these mathematical necessities — called Elsewheres — exist in realms flung so far through time & space we will never encounter them.

Strange Torpedo disagrees. Says those Elsewheres — far from flung — are really so close to our own Reality Assumption that without the right kind of eyes we don’t see them.

Strange Torpedo never shuts off for a more obvious reason — the pinball machine somehow convinced some psychiatrist to prescribe him mix-salt amphetamines for a bogus case of A.D.D.

Strange Torpedo — the sleepless extraterrestrial multi-dimension leaning orphan pinball machine — is one good example of Spun.

“Yo those Spun Cookies on your blog are pretty stale.” A friend pointed out recently. “Can we smoke ’em?”

Pippi: can you smoke a Spun Cookie?

Heads Up: To The Youth! You can take Pippi at her word. She is not just an expert. Pippi is long gone Pro.

She writes a weekly column for the successful fiber-craft web rag Knitty; a column Pippi sneakily & bravely named Get Spun.

Wicked frikkin funny. No shit.

Not the column itself — though it’s no doubt speckled liberally with cult knitter inside jokes. The title though is all-time classic art by itself; it will live brilliantly on. The joke not only identifies Pippi’s allegiance — on our side — it also spews chuckles aplenty out of every old-time drug user I tell.

“Hey my friend Pippi calls her column in a knitting magazine Get Spun!”

“Do the knitters know?” One friend asked.

Only the knitters who know shit about anything.

“Man I am Spun.” A friend once proclaimed.

“Hard Spun.” I assured him.

And that is all ye need to know.

Unless you still can’t figure out what Spun means.

One time in the passenger seat of a parked car I got so wasted on drugs — quality psychedelics — that I actually thought I was flying a spaceship.

It is the uncontested pinnacle of my personal far&wide drug experience. To this day I still swell some with pride at the accomplishment. Just you go an imagine the amount of drugs required. Plenty of people have taken enough drugs to forget momentarily which exact planet they are on.

But who here has borrowed & taken the actual spaceship out for a joy spin?

Truth told: The spaceship was not lent so much as conjured from brain resin — strange hypothalamic crystalline wash-off (reputedly the most potent drug concoction in the cosmos) — which lay sludge-puddled & stuck in the bottom of my skull. This residue of a 10-year plus drug binge is the leftover drugs that, for various unavoidable reasons, never made it to the hypothalamus; the part of the brain responsible for converting drugs into the neurotransmitter proteins — ie dopamine & seretonin –which rule so total-way awesomely.

Normally these sludge pools lie dormant but under special conditions — when the bottom-skull reservoirs are full, a feat accomplished at maximum on 2 or 3 occasions per lifetime — erupt. Back into the brain. And settle. Thinly & invisibly blanket the hypothalamus. Then seep slowly if with pronounced efficacy over the course of the ensuing decade into the various synapses.

WAY! Free drugs dudez!

That’s the real reason I seemed to handle a strange and blistering fast spacecraft — my first solo flight — with the greatest of ease. Because my reservoirs erupted. YEAH!! So I wasn’t just high on the drugs I took that night but on a semblance of all the drugs I — or anyone else — had barreled into my brain ever in my life.

Expensive little spaceship ride! I tell you.

But it was awesome.

That’s why Pippi says Get Spun.

Hard Spun.

Off to the Monkey House — gone. Gone far & hard enough to never come back.

Spun.

Spun Kookie.

Round & round & round & round
Round & round & round
& Round.

And Round!

Singing Thank You!!
For a real good time.
>>Grateful Dead

Any questions?

Yeah! Got one:

Who is going to win the 2007 Kentucky Derby (hint: my new favorite racehorse)?

I will place a complimentary $5 Kentucky Derby bet on behalf of the first reader to email me the correct answer. Get Spun. Spin It Like You Stole It. Good Luck.

My New Favorite Racehorse…

…Does a good-time flying breeze leap across the finish line.

What does your favorite racehorse do for fun?

the Million Dollar Race

My very first post on open container speedWay – the Get Rich Quick Trick of the Week – was a bit of a failure.

No one got rich quick on my advice that week.

I wrote it the morning of last year’s Preakness Stakes. The Preakness is the so-called “2^nd Jewel” of the Triple Crown; the fabled & elusive grand prize of American thoroughbred horseracing.

The Triple Crown is a 3-race sequence that begins on the first Saturday every May with the Kentucky Derby. It’s followed in two weeks by the Preakness. The third and final jewel, run 3 weeks after the Preakness, is the grueling mile & one-half Belmont Stakes; a veritable equine marathon.

These races are restricted to 3-year-old horses. For a variety of reasons – the distance of each race; the length of time between races; that they’re run by a particular crop of horses just once – it is a supreme achievement to win all three. A supreme achievement, and rare. Accomplishable only by the rarest of Champions.

The Triple Crown was won three times – by Secretariat, Seattle Slew & Affirmed – during the 1970’s. None have won all three races since.

With few exceptions, none of my readers are racehorse enthusiasts. Still I feel certain that each of you will feel touched, in a strange way – touched by joy – when finally the Crown gets claimed by a rarest of equine champions.

It’ll give cause to celebrate.

In each of the past three years an exceptional racehorse has very nearly won. Came so close that their losses, viewed in combination, can only be described as an extreme fluke.

In 2004 Smarty Jones nailed the Derby & Preakness in impressive fashion – only to lose the Belmont by a mere length before a stunned & saddened crowd of 130,000.

In 2005 Afleet Alex treated fans of the game to emotionally stirring Preakness & Belmont Stakes wins – after he was eliminated, from Triple Crown contention, when he finished the Kentucky Derby one seemingly inexplicable length behind 50-to-1 longshot winner Giacomo.

Last year, of course, it was Barbaro.

Barbaro buried fellow Kentucky Derby contenders so profoundly that his ultimate sweep of the Triple Crown was considered an all but unstoppable certainty.

“Barring some unforeseen tragedy,” Washington Post racehorse columnist Andy Beyer – a deservedly well-regarded purveyor of such opinions – swore, “Barbaro will win the Triple Crown.”

I disagreed. So I wrote a blog-post, the morning of last year’s Preakness Stakes, which urged readers to bet against Barbaro. That was my Get Rich Quick Trick of the Week.

“Barbaro will lose today,” I assured, it turned out, too correctly.

So in a sense the post did succeed. I was right. But I came up short in two crucial ways: 1. I did not explain why my certainty that Barbaro would lose. 2. I did not provide my readers – or myself for that matter – with a viable alternative wager.

The fact that Barbaro ultimately lost his life, to a gruesome leg injury sustained at the race’s onset, still makes me feel a little…weirded out. By the irony. But grateful, ultimately, for my failure to predict the winner.

Barbaro’s loss was a genuine tragedy. Not just for the horse, his connections, and fans of the race game; Barbaro’s loss is indicative of a greater calamity.

Humankind’s.

And I want no profit from humankind’s calamity.

The equine as a species has been profoundly good & helpful to humans. But humans by & large have treated the equine cruelly — racehorses in particular.

One example: In his final race before the 2005 Kentucky Derby, Afleet Alex, despite his already insurmountable lead, was whipped mercilessly by jockey Jeremy Rose. Though it was a profoundly careless decision, one can’t blame Rose entirely. He was over-excited. His mount’s owners were considering replacing him with a more experienced jockey for the Kentucky Derby. So Rose wanted to prove he could pilot Afleet Alex to an impressive win.

“It was a Million Dollar Race,” Rose explained, when asked by reporters to justify his plainly needless whip action.

It was a Million Dollar Race.

One Afleet Alex indeed did win impressively; but the cost of that performance was dear.

Fast forward three weeks: Afleet Alex, with a quarter-mile to go, is in a perfect stalking position to surge forward & overtake the Big Race’s tiring leaders; superbly poised to win the Kentucky Derby. Yet he ‘failed to fire,’ as they say in racetrack parlance. His one-length loss, I’ve mentioned, is considered inexplicable by fans of the game.

But I can explain it easy.

Perhaps his blowout win 3 weeks earlier caused Afleet Alex to inadvertently expend the ATP he needed to triumph in the Kentucky Derby. Though I believe the loss was more conscious, than biochemical, in nature.

I propose it was deliberate.

When asked by his jockey to hit the gas, as it were, and make a winning move in the Churchill Downs’ homestretch…Afleet Alex simply said, “Whatever dude.”

Remember: Afleet Alex went on to score huge wins in the Preakness & Belmont. Thus, had he won the Derby, Afleet Alex would’ve swept the Triple Crown – a priceless prize that would give humans joy – and he plumb did not want to.

Not after he got his ass whipped for money.

And that, albeit belatedly, explains why I knew Barbaro would lose last year’s Preakness Stakes. Overwhelming likelihood is, had he won the Preakness, Barbaro would’ve gone on the claim the Crown. But he, like Afleet Alex, did not want to. Or perhaps he wanted to but regrettably could not; because people are cruel to racehorses. And cruelty inevitably begets disappointment.

Heads Up to the human community: the racehorses are trying to tell us something!

Smart bet is to listen.

& then She Peeled the Fuck Out.

Just Zip It [far left] gains ground in the homestretch.

the Raw Want to Win

My buddy Alan over at Left At The Gate is part owner of this — by appearance — absolutely smashing racehorse. Her name is Just Zip It. Just Zip It is a 2-year-old filly. A filly is a young female equine. Just Zip It races for the first time in the 4th at Aqueduct today.

Just Zip It’s career debut will be against fellow 2-year-old filly Maidens. This is interesting: Maiden races are restricted to horses who’ve never won. Or, as with Just Zip It, never run.

The business of betting on a Maiden race boils down purely to one, albeit vexing, question: which horse wants it the most?

Maiden races require a peculiar blend of raw hunch tempered by mathematical deduction. Whereas, with older horses, it’s often the other way around — mathematics tempered by instinct.

I love to bet the Maidens. Here’s why: when I bet on a horse — the Long Shot — who’s not ‘supposed’ to win it feels like I’ve bet smartly on me.

😉

And Maidens win at long odds more frequently than contenders in any other type of race.

The best is when, on a hunch, you select & bet on a first-timer — like Just Zip It — and win. A horse who plumb wants it enough to prevail in her very first race…she makes me hearts leap! It’s inspiring.

And a powerful lesson for People: Why bet on a horse who has never proved their worth in a race? Why? Raw want — that’s the key. When I bet for what I want most I feel good even when I lose. And that, dear readers, is the Ticket to a good day of Gambling.

I ask: does Just Zip It look like she wants to win?

I’ve thought so for months. Alas I can’t bet on her. She races in just over an hour — 2PM — and I have no dough.

So goes.

But — that being the case — I deeply suspect she’ll win.

I’m rooting cosmically for her. For good reasons: 1. I have a good feeling about her and good feelings are right. Dig? I want to feel good and right today! Shit I’ll be broke either way…

2 . I got mad Props for my buddy Alan. He keeps the best racehorse blog in Town. I read his stuff — for love of the races — every day for a year. The first thing that struck me about the dudes blog — & Blogs in general — was that he owed his success to the Oldest Trick in the Literary Book:

He writes about what he loves. And every once in awhile insults some jerk like Dick Cheney. Follow that formula impeccably and even crappy joints like Open Container speedWay can go Huge.

And if all else fails you can always toss in some stuff about chicks & drugs & booze.

The horses have reached the Starting Gate…all in line & they’re OFF!

Click shortly after 2Pm if you want to watch the free replay. [4th race Nov. 24]

Sign in: e6524.7@gmail.com

Password: 673720

Night On the Hustle

I quit selling partyWhatevers some years ago; shortly after I learned I had PTSD. I realized that there was Just No Way. The stress would kill me. Or else I’d be caught & screwed for it in imaginable ways.

Quitting that racket has been a noble if thus far tragically nonviable undertaking. While far from stable, the shroom business provided me with the occasional 2 to $3000 stack. And they help out considerable.

Since then I’ve been so broke that I wonder if it’s Wrong to sell a kidney. I can see one circumstance where it could work…maybe. But I won’t spell it out because that’d make it sound like we had unlawfulness on Open Container speedWay.

Less complicated is the question of whether it’s moral to sell marijuana to a grown adult.

Can I get a Hell YES from the People!!

It is not only Moral but judicious. Especially if someone wants to buy it. If no one does then it’s inadvisable — since you’ll likely get stuck trying to pawn it off while you don’t smoke it (yeah right) for half the next week.

I can’t sell pot anymore either. Because that shit happens incessant.

Consider the scenario: You get ‘cuffed (loaned) an ounce of pot by a friend who made no bones about their certainty that they would regret it. It’s not that you’d ever rip them off coldly — an incontestable truth which ultimately sways your friend over his, and your own, better judgement — but still.

For ten thousand reasons the last thousand fronted ounce deals have rarely concluded happily.

This time it was almost different. You owe $300 for zip. To repay you need sell six of the ounce’s eight eighths for $50 each. That leaves you ideally with one to smoke and one to sell. But you haven’t eaten for two days. You need a pack of American Spirit menthol to smoke & a few pills to stay awake. Plus you owed someone $20 from party Whatevers last week…the same Someone who happens to score the first satchel.

So a fiddy spot poofs before you’ve started. You still need to sell six eighths for $50 to break even and gain just one bag for profit.

Since you sell your next bag to a Friend you can only get $45. Because it is unconscionably difficult to charge a friend $50. Then you remember: I never sell pot to strangers!

At this rate you’ll be $15 ahead if you sell every sack at $45. And that of course presumes you dispatch the entire ounce in one night. Makes you a touch nervous, that bitchy $15 thing. Jumpy. Better go pack a bowl & smoke it to calm down.

Plan to sell that bag for $45 firm — tell ’em it was a fiddy minus five for the very small bowl you packed (a couple tokie-tokes down the line it manages to fetch a half-respectable $30).

The margin is tight but the night goes well. Even managed to swing off a couple for full price to students from LandMine college…You go to sleep in the morning — finally — with $249 cash and one eighth left to sell. Get $50 for it and you’ll be just one dollar short!

All told, an exemplary night on the Hustle.

Except when you wake up in the morning and reach into your pocket to count your dough you discover, with violent dismay, that you slept on & miserably squished the last of the stash.

Now. You can — and will — traverse great lengths to convince potential flat-sack Custies that the buds are provably none worse for the wear.

‘Provably?’ One asks opportunistically. ‘Then smoke some with me right now. To prove it.’

Of course you have no choice — what good is a man’s Word if he don’t back it up? Plus the dude promises to pay full price for the sack — should he deem it ‘untarnished’ — even though the two of you just smoked from it.

A gamble for sure — but if it pays off you sell the sack and get stoned.

Desperate gambles rarely pay off.

The best you can recoup from the eighth of Flatties is $25 plus a loose speed pill or two. You pop these and do a little hypovent-O-freak out, quietly, by yourself, on a bench at the train station. You chose the train station partly because you like trains. And sitting there when everything sucks makes you feel like you’re off for something better.

It is also one place your debtor is sure to not inadvertently find you.

The train station in Brattleboro is a few hundred feet away from the bridge across the Connecticut River. Just past that is the local Wal Mart — built when Vermont wouldn’t allow them. The river forms the border with New Hampshire.

3-odd miles or so past the Wal Mart is the Hinsdale Off Track Betting & Poker Parlor. You may want to try there if you’re short on cash after a typical night on the hustle. In fact you may just want to skip the Hustle altogether and make straight for the OTB. I occasionally have won respectable sums from paltry investments. In other words I have triumphed mathematically at the races. It happens.

Not so with one single damn ounce of weed on the Cuff. Can’t recall breaking even — and for certain I’ve never done better.

Well then. Thanks for reading…I got to go now & scoop up a few bucks I’m owed for washing dishes (hired & fired in a day. Sad story) last weekend.

Then I’m off: to the Races.

my nigaa Scrappy T

First initial is Mike
Go by the middle name
E

always In The Money
Like my nigaa
Scrappy T

Scrappy T’s my favorite racehorse
Go Scrappy GO!
Can’t win every time
But he wants to
He’s my Hero!

Overlooked him in your Triple
& he got Up For the Show
That’s why your Money Said Goodbye
and I say Hello!

Hello Hello

When your money says Goodbye
I say:
thanx for D money Yo!

virtual Brain Medicine

With a push of a button, special effects will appear — a mosque’s call to prayer, a sandstorm, the sounds of bullets or bombs. “We can put a person in a Virtual Reality headset and have them walk down the streets of Baghdad,” says University of Southern California psychologist Skip Rizzo. “They can ride in a Humvee, fly in a helicopter over a battle scene or drive on a desert road.”

This is no video game, nor is it a training device. Rizzo and colleagues are developing a psychological tool to treat post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, by bringing soldiers back to the scenes that still haunt them.
>>Wired1.28.2005

The theory — and by my good estimate it’s sound — goes: face the trauma until we may face it calmly. Regroup & repeat as needed.

I have my own traumas. We all do. Mine seem more In My Face than some. Compare mine with some other’s and all I can say is it sucks to be me. But so what?

I’ve lost a few bets on racehorses. I usually want to kill myself afterward. Yeah — over 5 bucks. Can you believe that?

Me neither.

That’s what I’d realize on long walks homeward after I lost my last $5 on the races. I want to die all the time. Not over 5 dollars. It had more to do with the times as a child I was unconscionably molested.

So goes.

Like the Vet who submits voluntarily to Virtual Combat for PTSD treatment I’ve peered long on my walks homeward into trauma’s ill effect on me. Until I learned to laugh in spite. Wrote a good story about it. Now I don’t want to die near as much as I used to.

Good for me.

I’d rather blog-post than gamble these days. Sworn all bets off? Sh!t no. Bets are Fun. But I have better luck lately when I chase Truth down — or over the rollercoaster top — in writing.