I can't sleep. Stupid alcohol messing with my sleep. I want coffee. In fact I'll go make some. Soon. Before I've written more then a few lines more. I love music. I can't play or sing but I love listening to it. I love good lyrics. I want to write some things about music. Why? I dunno, probably because it amuses me. And sometimes someone say; "Hey, if you like that you'd probably love this!" and I find something really, really cool. Or I'm just an egomaniac who loves the fact that you guys comment on stuff I write and gives me attention? Who the fuck knows? Anyway, I've got my coffee so here it goes. My first little text about a musician I love; David Bowie.
I was 15. Or something. I was a geek, I am still but back that I wasn't the lovable rather reasonably-looking and cheerful geek that you've all grown to like and cherish. I was an ugly mofo. I was overweight. I had great grades, but other then that I was not successful with anything really. I wasn't even a fair starcraft player yet. I don't think I was really happy, but that would change a few months later. It was a summer evening. It was raining. I sat in front of the TV in my parents house and they showed a documentary called "The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars". From that day forward my online handles were always something like "dusty" or "stardust". Quite possibly the single gayest fact about me known to man.
I don't care that he was dressed in a, ehh, dress? On that day in London 1973 the guy was a god. Or an alien. "Keep your 'lectric eye on me babe!" After watching that crap I had long hair for the next 4 or 5 years. This is 3 years later;
Time flies, right? Which reminds me, Bowie sang about that too!
Time - He flexes like a whore
Falls wanking to the floor
His trick is you and me, boy
Anyway, I started listening a lot to him and he's actually more then a really fucking gay look, a messiah complex and a fairly cool voice. They guy is an artist in every sense of the word and has both some of the coolest lyrics ever written and some really cool rock songs. His first big Album was "Space Oddity" from 1969. The Album has two really cool songs, the titular "Space Oddity" and the amazingly awesomely named "Unwashed and somewhat slightly dazed". The first one has a really cheesy video. Notice how young Bowie looked a bit like a young Stu Ungar and then ignore the video and hit the song up on spotify instead. The video version sucks ass.
The other songs on the Album are of less stellar quality. I like some of them but I wouldn't recommend them to anyone but a Bowie fan. A year later, 1970, he released "The Man who Sold the World". This album, like the first one, has two really good songs ("The Man who Sold the World" and The Width of a Circle") and a bunch I don't care much for. Nirvana made a great live cover of the first one, but other then that no one I know really gives two shits about this album. Yet another year later he put out "Honky Dory" with a bunch of cool songs including classics "Changes", "Life on Mars?" and one of my personal favourites; "Oh! You Pretty Things". It's a really nice feel-good song.
Wake up you sleepy head Put on some clothes,
shake up your bed
Put another log on the fire for me
I've made some breakfast and coffee
Look out my window and what do I see
A crack in the sky and a hand reaching down to me
The guy looks seriously retarded though, I can see why he started using make up.
Then he finally got around to make The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, quite possibly on of the greatest concept albums of all time. To quote wikipedia; "The character of Ziggy was initially inspired by British rock 'n' roll singer Vince Taylor who Bowie met after he had had a breakdown and believed he was a cross between a god and an alien". Yea, he's that weird.
The time is five years to go before the end of the earth. It has been announced that the world will end because of lack of natural resources. Ziggy is in a position where all the kids have access to things that they thought they wanted. The older people have lost all touch with reality and the kids are left on their own to plunder anything. Ziggy was in a rock-and-roll band and the kids no longer want rock-and-roll. There's no electricity to play it. Ziggy's adviser tells him to collect news and sing it, 'cause there is no news. So Ziggy does this and there is terrible news. 'All the young dudes' is a song about this news. It's no hymn to the youth as people thought. It is completely the opposite. [...]
The end comes when the infinites arrive. They really are a black hole, but I've made them people because it would be very hard to explain a black hole on stage. [...]
Ziggy is advised in a dream by the infinites to write the coming of a Starman, so he writes 'Starman', which is the first news of hope that the people have heard. So they latch onto it immediately...The starmen that he is talking about are called the infinites, and they are black-hole jumpers. Ziggy has been talking about this amazing spaceman who will be coming down to save the earth. They arrive somewhere in Greenwich Village. They don't have a care in the world and are of no possible use to us. They just happened to stumble into our universe by black hole jumping. Their whole life is travelling from universe to universe. In the stage show, one of them resembles Brando, another one is a Black New Yorker. I even have one called Queenie, the Infinite Fox...Now Ziggy starts to believe in all this himself and thinks himself a prophet of the future starmen. He takes himself up to the incredible spiritual heights and is kept alive by his disciples. When the infinites arrive, they take bits of Ziggy to make them real because in their original state they are anti-matter and cannot exist in our world. And they tear him to pieces on stage during the song 'Rock 'n' roll suicide'. As soon as Ziggy dies on stage the infinites take his elements and make themselves visible.
And then they try to tell you that drugs never did any good... If you truly believe that I recommend you to burn all your CD's and remove spotify from your computer. Half the guys you're listening to were high as kites when they made that music, hell, the Beatles were so stoned that they even let Ringo sing a few songs! (bonus points if you figure out who I stole that joke from)
Anyway, at this point I'd strongly recommend you to put this trackon on spotify. That's the introduction to his last live show as Ziggy Stardust before he retired that persona. If you can find that concert DVD it's great, or you can just open the album up on spotify. It's really, really good. Everything from his own super hit "Ziggy Stardust" to his cover of the Rolling Stones "Let's spend the night together" and Jacques Brel's "My Death" is cool as fuck. The single greatest thing might be how coherent that concert was. It starts out with Beethoven's ninth symphony from A Clockwork Orange, then the band starts playing the rock song "Hang On To Yourself" which sets the tone for the first part which is mostly up beat songs before the turning point in the middle with "Space Oddity" and "My Death" which builds up towards a much darker part of the performance. The second part is about death, getting old, philosophy and sex rather then romantic emotions. It ends with the superb "Rock and Roll Suicide".
While writing this I get the general feeling that Bowie speaks much more to the younger version of Dusty. The version I'd probably despise a fair bit and tell to get his damn act together if he wants to get something done or get laid. I'd probably tell his sorry ass that he can't expect to just find some game and make ridiculous amounts of money and then by some twist of fate start with martial arts to get in shape. Or at least I hope I would. Anyway. I don't care if I'm more grown up and happy as a fish in water, this last song feels comforting.
Oh no love! you're not alone
No matter what or who you've been
No matter when or where you've seen
After the Ziggy Stardust era he made a few more good albums and a bunch of songs I really like. "Rebel Rebel" and "Absolute beginners" (one of the best love songs of all time, or at least top ~50 imo) comes to mind.
I've nothing much to offer
There's nothing much to take
I'm an absolute beginner
And I'm absolutely sane
As long as we're together
The rest can go to hell
I absolutely love you
But we're absolute beginners
With eyes completely open
But nervous all the same
Unfortunately most of his later stuff is really weird and it doesn't really speak to me. At all. Don't get me wrong, he does a bunch of cool stuff, but I just don't get it. He has great ideas but everything just turns into some kind of experimental glue of mediocrity much like The Rolling Stones' "Their Satanic Majesties Request". Unfortunately he did not follow it up with a Beggars Banquet (on of the greatest albums of all time) but rather more of the same crap.
Other random songs I think you should check out is the wonderfully ironic "God Knows I'm Good" about an old lady who is shoplifting, the really gay song "Lady Stardust" (with really cool lyrics), the über cool "Moonage Daydream" and the fairly cute "Let me Sleep Beside You".
If you don't know a lot about Bowie but want to check him out I made a little playlist with some of my favourite songs of him. Both a lot of his hits but also some slightly less known songs;
Once again I'm slightly more drunk then I'm supposed to be. Thank good for firefox's built-in spelling thingy. And "thingy" is a word, everyone who has seen anything by Joss Whendon knows that. Fuck firefox.
Today was another awesome day. I got advice from Sanai and Bohus about some stuff and they're both very wise young/fairly young men who's bet sizeing probably sucks ass. Then I played some poker and made like 2-3k before getting a txt msg form my friends Matti and Pauliina who will leave Sweden tomorrow so went out and ate dinner and drank a non disclosed number of beers with them. When I got to the restaurant I they had us wait (!) because they had no tables ready. They asked if we wanted something to drink and I replied "A glass of red wine, please". At once I started to wonder if I turned gay, but realised that I in no way feel that anal sex would be nice so I figured that I for some reason just tend to like red wine. Sorry Daniel.
After that I went to some student bar and ordered "Irish Coffee". It might have been the most horrid drink I've ever tasted. On a scale from 1 to 10 where 10 is "Passable" and 1 is "distilled piss" it was a weak 2. I'm fairly sure you'd actually need burnt coffee, cream from 1998 and some kind of home made Somalian Whiskey to make such a drink. It was probably the worst liquid I've ever tasted. And I've been to Bulgaria.
Then I took a cab home. They taxi driver told me that he only worked nights, I asked how he did that because I tend to get very tired if I try to work nights. He was like; "wtf why?". I replied; "well either it gets to bright so I wake up early or some buddy calls me and wants something in the middle of my sleep". He said he didn't have friends. I got scared. For many reasons.
Anyway, I just wanted to express how much I like everyone (except Daniel W and Simon. You guys shouldn't get bigger heads anyway, lol). Kraaaam!
Yesterday was probably my best day overall in a long as time. Better then winning prima's Sunday donkament, much better then Christmas and better then any day I can actually remember except maybe for the first time I tried BJJ.
Just a perfect day
Problems all left alone Weekenders on our own
It's such fun - Lou Reed
I started out slow and I decided to play some poker since apparently I'm currently doing very good in some rake race, which I did not know about. Might as well get some hands in, right? I started out down a little bit which made me feel a small amount of annoyance since I've had two losing months behind me and this month, despite being decent in terms of results, has been a little slow. I reminded myself that I should not let such things mess with my happiness levels too much;
Which man can save his brother soul
Oh man it's just self control
Don't gain the world and lose your soul
Wisdom is better than silver and gold - Bob Marley
The guy had been shitting on me by owning, sucking out on and coolering me left and right and I finally get to stack him. Lacking anything reasonable to have sex with a Tuesday morning that might have been the most satisfying feeling I could reasonably expect. After that I won a bunch of buyins in mid stakes omaha and suddenly I was up 1.2k or something for the morning and decided to call it quits. When I started sucking out on people I sang along, badly, with Van Morrison in "Everyone". It's the best suck out song ever, quite possibly as good as have the "haters gonna hate"-fedor-gif on your screen.
With our heads so high smile at the passers by
Then we'll softly sigh ay, ay, ay, ay, ay
Everyone, everyone, everyone, everyone Everyone, everyone, everyone, everyone
Then I went to school to get my essay on game theory in negotiations back and talk about that and some other essays. It was very interesting and I got to explain the some law students and two professors why you have to balance you're "go to trial"-rate after you're making treats and how you can calculate the optimal rate of that knowing the risks involved, costs and the other sides expected risk-averseness. Got my grades and it turns out that for the first time in 7 semesters of law school I got the maximum grade. I tried to keep my pokerface but I felt a little bit like a little girl getting her first pony. My pokerface never was very good anyway . Hmm, that's not true actually, Myth wrote some really good stuff about that in the article section about live poker. I normally feel that he's a little bit overrated when it comes to online play but credit should be given where credit is due and he is a creative and tricky motherfucker. I might try to write my thesis on a similar subject to this essay so I'm really happy it was well received. I have this dream lingering in my head that some day I want to be an author, and I think it could be really interesting to write something less serious about how you can apply game theory and poker wisdom "in real life".
I got home a little late and felt a tiny bit stressed out because I had dinner plans and I was suppose to actually cook dinner before I got company. Fortunately I got a text stating that I wasn't the only one who was late, so I had time to actually make a very nice meal. We ate, watched "Watchmen" (underrated movie in my opinion, Rorschach is really bad ass) and drank about 3 bottles of 30$ wine. I've only recently figured out that wine actually can taste better or worse depending on price range, country and such. Also, red wine tends to turn you into a Philosoraptor.
For some reason I do not have a headache, so now I think I'll go stack some fools and see if I can't win that rake race I've been looking at for a while.
For some reason my blog seems to be rather interesting to a bunch of people. Or it might just be that a bunch of you have to much time on your hands. Here comes a personal post. I'm slightly intoxicated so don't mind my spelling, or lack there off.
I've never been in great trouble. My childhood was nice. I've never been really poor. When I was 15 and fat I couldn't get the nice blond girl with big boobs, and I felt sad, but other then that I've always been a lucky fuck with a big ass smile on my lips. I have no right to claim that I understand pain or any of that shit, but I've had my share of 70k downswings and I've bleed on the streets (due to a bicycle accident, but fuck it, it sounds cool). And I never asked for a free lunch.
I do know people who has been through some bad times though. I recently spent an evening and a bottle of rather nice red wine with a person I've come to greatly admire. She made me think of this piece of wonderful lyrics from the Black Album (which Nolan, our forum black person, introduced me too);
I never asked for nothin I don't demand of myself
Honesty, loyalty, friends and then wealth
Death before dishonor and I tell you what else
I tighten my belt 'fore I beg for help
Foolish pride is what held me together through the years
I just play the hand I'm dealt, I can't say I've never knelt
Before God and asked for better cards at times to no avail
But I never sat back feelin sorry for myself
If you don't give me heaven I'll raise hell
And I've also come to the conclusion that this nice little girl weighing in less then 50 kilos and 150 cm is more of a man then the bunch of you girly-men who posts EMO-cry-posts about poker. And no, I'm not guilt free, I used to do that too, but keep that in mind. You might be rich, you might be successful and you might even be a happy person, but in the balls department you're getting owned by a god damned hobbit. Doesn't mean that you're a bad person or that I don't respect you, but it's still something to think about. Fuck it, go be happy about the nice things you have in your life rather then complain about the money you for some reason did not win.
Or in the case of those of you I consider worthless pieces of diseased cow's stool, in the words of the late and great Bill Hicks; kill yourselves. The rests of us will go make something cool of our lives. Life is beautiful and don't ever forget it you ungrateful fucks.
I figured I'd post a bunch of my goals just to keep track and pressure myself a little bit. I've got a ton of goals in different areas of my life so it'll be a decent sized blog post. I'll try to post them by subject.
Poker
- Play at least 40k hands/month consistently. And those hands should be of reasonable quality. No god damned 3-tabling 5/10 HU for 4 hours vs some dude I think I might maybe have an edge against somewhere or anything stupid like that. I always say that I'll start table selecting better but now I think I'll actually do that. I've even added a bunch of 1/2 PLO tables when I can't find good action elsewhere.
- I also have a monetary goal that's fairly reasonable, but I don't want to make that public.
- Get started with some coaching and coach at least 3 people with good results and mutual profit.
- Watch at least on poker video each week and learn something from it. Gotta keep up with the new times and shit.
I feel that these goals are fairly self-explanatory. I no longer feel that it's reasonable to think that I'll be a full time 10/20+ reg so I might as well just get some decent volume in and get a decent profit playing mid stakes rather then going for the high variance route. I just want a steady income for a while. Dusty's getting old, but he still needs some coin. Strippers and blow ain't cheap
Just kidding, I'm not a baller. I'm a responsible young man who wants to build a future.
Survivalism
- Build a complete bug-out-bag.
- Test said bag in mother nature and see how I do.
I want to be ready when shit goes down. Weather it's a Zombie invasion, a feminazi Coup d'état or something else I'd very much like to be able to have a decent chance at surviving.
Life style design
- Read "The 4-Hour Work week" and "Getting Things Done".
- Get in touch with at least 5 new people which can enrich my life in some way in a meaningful way.
- Find at least one way to do shit more effective and remove one thing that takes up more energy then it gives each month.
I want to get more shit done in less time so that I can spend more time doing cool shit that enriches my life and makes me happy.
Investment
- Beat the market
- Find a way to learn trading and such fast and then learn enough so that I can feel confident that I know wtf I'm doing by this time next year.
I want to get rich enough so that I don't have to worry about it any more when I'm 30. To reach that goal I'll need to have a good rate of interest on my saved up capital. Thus I need to learn this.
Health
- Eat healthy
- Work out 3-4 days a week in some way
- Lose 5kg before my birthday (about 2.5 months away) and then figure out how much more I need to get rid of before I'm ripped.
"I want to look good naked" - Lester Burnham.
Also there's so much stuff I want to do so it'd probably help with a long ass life.
Other
- Get my law degree or, if I happen to find something cooler to do this fall, make sure that I only have my thesis left.
- Read at least 12 different books by 8 different authors.
- Also a "total wealth"-goal that I don't want to disclose.
Getting my law degree, or at least being close enough to it so that I can get it very fast whenever I want, seems good. Except for the obvious upside ("yea I'm a lawyer, so... do you wanna go to my place and sue something?") it'd be a nice accomplishment overall. As for the books; I just love reading and I think it makes me a wiser person so I want to make sure to keep up that habit.
Also, I'd like some more music to listen too. Right now this is my main play list. If anyone likes it I'd like you to recommend me 5 songs you really like.
http://www.liquidpoker.net/h/882163 - Fairly sick 2/4 pot. I stopped counting outs when I got to the straight outs and decided that "fuck his 65, I'm not good enough to play the river anyway". Then it bricked and I won and I was like "u mad?! :D"
http://www.liquidpoker.net/h/881842 - This hand I'm not sure about, tbh I though I was dead on the turn when he calls me but I can't really give up on one of the best cards in the deck with those odds. The guy who folded seemed to pay of a lot too.
So right now I'm up a little bit. Played like 12k hands so far this month, which is fairly good.
I have no given up my hopes of being some super high stakes balla. I've made smallish six figures two years in a row now but my swings have been huge. What it all comes down to is that I just can't compete with a lot of the really good 10/20+ players. There's a fairly good chance that a bunch of them are just a lot smarter then me. I thought I was smart until I started law school... Either way I just can't compete playing half time vs really smart people who dedicates their lives to poker.
I was super happy when I read on of the high stakes super volyme-people's blog and realised that my hourly was fairly close to his (but obviously I've been running better). I don't want to play 100k hands per month though. I want to be able to work out, put at least some effort into school and have a nice social life. I also want to put a lot of effort into managing my stock portfolio since it's been horribly ignored for to long and I want to get involved a lot with the Swedish Libertarian Party.
In 2011 I hope to make a decent profit and get a fair bit of hands in, but I'd very much prefer to keep the variance lower. I'm tired of swinging like a mad man all the time so this yea I'll make an effort to table select a little bit more and try to play more on mid stakes and have less 5/10+ HU battles with good regs. I'll also start coaching a bit. Only profit sharing deals though, and only people I feel might have some kind of talent and a personality I can stand.
I'll probably not be a euro millionaire before 25 anyway, so I might as well sit back and go with slow and steady instead of fast and chaotic. It'll probably be better for my mental health too.
So 2010 was my best year so far both in poker and in life overall by far. 2011 will be even better. I'm wiser, sexier and richer then a year ago and in addition to that I've got a plan which will turn me into a even better human being. I killed my old Swedish blogg because it took too much energy so I might post some rants here from time to time.
Anyway, happy new year! May your sets fill up on the river and the girls you encounter be of questionable moral!
I won't play more poker before 2011 but I've got some money on FTP and I heard there was a FTOPS going on I might stakes someone or buy action or whatever. Don't want any hassle though so don't bother asking unless I know you or if someone I know well can tell me you're a good guy. Other then that I'm open for suggestions so PM away if you feel that you have some offer I might be interested in.
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. Hmm, that's not true actually, Myth wrote some really good stuff about that in the article section about live poker. I normally feel that he's a little bit overrated when it comes to online play but credit should be given where credit is due and he is a creative and tricky motherfucker. I might try to write my thesis on a similar subject to this essay so I'm really happy it was well received. I have this dream lingering in my head that some day I want to be an author, and I think it could be really interesting to write something less serious about how you can apply game theory and poker wisdom "in real life". 
