Below are the 14 most recent journal entries recorded in johntard's LiveJournal:

Friday, April 28th, 2006
1:21 pm	Working Again I went home for a couple months last year for Thanksgiving and played very little poker when I was outside of Memphis (about 80% of the time). When i got back to BA in early December I started playing pretty regularly, but it was interrupted by stuff like finding a new apartment to rent, weekend trips to the beach and other nonsense. When I left for Brasil in early February I knew I was fucked on the work front. I didn´t play a single hand during the 1.5 months I was in Brasil. So I come back to BA and crash in an apartment with no internet. I try to get it hooked up, but this being Argentina, fail miserably and decide to just hook up my laptop in a nearby internet cafe to work. My laptop cord breaks and I am left without work for another month. Furthermore, buying an apartment here is a part time job, so that took away a lot of potential table time. After what was by far the longest break in my short career, I have finally been logging a few hours and I am almost enjoying it. I am not making money by any means; I have had like 7 losing sessions in a row. Yet, just working again feels pretty good. I went on PokerTracker and reviewed all of my sessions and I was surprised how well I was playing. That´s the toughest thing about being a pro player, accepting the fact that you can be playing well and still losing two grand in a couple weeks. Most people cannot stomach this and I feel like I am finally at the point where variance means about nothing to me. I am really looking forward to when I get my apartment in order and I can just relax and work the 100 hours a month I need to. Once I can eclipse the $100/hour mark I will probably put on the breaks and stop trying to move up levels. There is no need for the variance of the higher games down here, not to mention the fact that I am not sure if I could even beat those higher games. So last night I was hanging out over at a friend´s apartment. Phil is doing pretty much the same thing as myself, but more successful across the board. A 24 year old black MIT grad who was an options trader in New York before moving down here to do what I am doing. Oh, and he solidly beats the 30/60 short games on Party. So I was watching him play last night and was actually getting a good perspective on different styles of play. I quickly realized that my play is way too rigid; there are way too many "rules" floating around in my head and I am not looking at the bigger picture. Like most above average- but not great- players, I am quite aggressive, but I have trouble turning it off at times. I have always been the most successful poker play I have known personally and it has been a big problem. Outside of college, (when I and everyone else sucked) I have never sat around and talked poker strategy. Sure I have read a lot of books, which has given me a very good foundation, but my strategy learning has mostly come from sitting and playing. Hopefully Phil will let me sweat him more because the chance to watch someone who is better at what you do is invaluable. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, April 24th, 2006
4:32 pm	Random Shit So the American bar here has free draft beer for about a third of the day and I certainly have been taking advantage of it. At least instead of working I am only paying the opportunity cost and not real alcohol expenses. Some friends and myself went to watch the Grizz-Mavs game. I had 100 pesos on the Grizz +8 and I was begging to up the stakes more. I thought we were going to lose, but even when we lose we play everyone close. Unfortunately the best defensive team in the league decided not to rebound or hustle. I think I am going to through some real money down on them for game 2, I can´t see Pau crapping the bed again as bad as he did last night. And things worked out pretty well, as he said I could give him 25 grams of weed instead of the 100 pesos. Good thing I am good friends with a drug dealer (weed dealer to be fair) so I can get it at cost. I am thinking of ways to decorate my apartment and am not coming up with many. Left to my own devices it would have a very black and white modern look. No plush couches or chairs, lots of angles. I lucked in to getting some outside help. The kid I made the bet with has a twin brother who is gay. He is my first ever gay friend and they are both cool guys. So anyway, Zach is interested in that shit and said he would help me out. I feel like Peter with the whole "I need a Jew" song in Family Guy. I needed a gay guy´s style advice and got lucky. Hopefully Brad Pitt will stumble into my life now and teach me how to get laid. Speaking of getting laid, my quest to look better naked is going pretty well. After 4 days I have gone to the gym 3 times. Each day I did incredibly low weight and high reps to avoid exactly what is happening to me. The first day the most I benched was 100 pounds 8 times. I am so sore now it hurts when I breath. I did a total of like 30 curls with 25lbs in each hand and I can barely lift my arms now. The soreness is very gratifying, but it is impeding future workouts. I guess you gotta crawl before you walk. Alright, off to go fill time in an empty schedule by looking for electronics for the apartment. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, April 21st, 2006
3:32 pm	Getting Fit So I woke up early today (11am) and for some reason had the motivation to go to the gym. It has probably been a year since I set foot in a gym and I have been trying to figure out what my motivation was this time around. I came to the conclusion that it was 50% health reasons and 50% to look better naked. Senior year of college I was in my best shape. Very little fat on the body and pretty decent strength. I never did cardio in the gym in college, but I had surprisingly good endurance due to all the conditioning I did from rugby. I could probably bench 225 2-3 times and could easily do 20 pull-ups. I was thinking today, what motivated me to go to the gym 4-5 times a week back then. I would say 10% of it was actually rugby. Though I sucked at rugby, I was still heavier than most of the guys out there, so the added mass made me suck slightly less. I also worked out legs because of rugby and would not usually do that. I might have gone a little just because it was included in our tuition and if Vandy is going to charge me two grand a week in fees I might as well get something out of it. That leaves the main reason (and invariably every man´s main reason for going to the gym) being to look better naked. But upon further introspection I could not accept this. First, I had a girlfriend pretty much all Senior year. I am sure she would mind if I put on 30 pounds and lost all my muscle, but short of that, I don´t think she gave a shit. Sure, I wanted to look better to other girls, but the rewards (having girls I had no chance sleeping with thinking I am marginally more attractive than if I didn´t work out) did not outweigh the costs (spending valuable time away from my kegerator). So I finally decided that I was killing myself in the gym for other GUYS. It makes sense really. Vandy is a competitive school academically, but even more so socially. I guess my competitive instinct was a lot stronger back then. I think people underestimate just how influential our instincts are in otherwise benign tasks. For instance, when Tim, Kevin, Emory and I would work out together in our summers home from school I tried a lot harder in the weightroom. And these are friends I have no reason to compete against (we are not going after the same girls and our social dynamic between ourselves has already been defined). Just think if you replace friends with "dickhead popular frat guy". Thousands of years of instinct are telling me that I can be as popular as him by getting bigger. Cavemen had pretty much one way of self improvement (and henceforth moving up the hierarchy) and that was getting larger. I am not saying cavemen lifted weights (or even consciencely acted upon their insticts), but in my instinctual caveman mind, getting bigger was by far the most plausible answer to improving my social standing. Girls do the same shit and it is a lot more obvious. Why does a girl buy a $1000 Prada bag instead of a $30 imitation JC Penny bag. I can´t tell the fucking difference and 99% of straight guys can´t either. They are doing it for other girls. I believe that "to look better naked" is a much larger motivator for girls going to the gym than guys. Being attractive is a much more important trait for girls than guys. Now I am in Argentina where the average guy comes up to my nipples and couldn´t bench the bar. I am leading an amazingly unhealthy lifestyle (with the one exception being that I walk about 20 times more than the average American). So the health reason gets a huge boost here. And since I am not really competing with these guys (for better or worse I am in a class all my own) I am working out for all the right reasons: health and to look better naked. That is, of course, contingent on me actually going back to the gym, but with the amount of free time I have, I could not forgive myself for being so utterly useless. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Tuesday, April 18th, 2006
1:02 pm	Catching Up Hey guys, been a while since I last posted. I really haven´t been too busy, just too unmotivated. Let´s see, I signed the boleto to my apartment, forking over 30%, or $16,000 USD. The process of receiving the money was pretty sketchy. Me and some guy I hadn´t met went up to some unmarked office and were led to a tiny room with nothing but a table and a money counter. I showed ID and a lady brought me the 16K (doesn´t look like that much in $100 bills). She runs it through the machine and I am on my way. My escort was explaining to me that this process is actually illegal, which is comforting, considering a I am taking out $38,000 next time. So I go and meet the owners and we actually count the cash on the table, causing me the question what year I am actually living in. So May 10th is the latest day possible I can move in. I actually got an extension for my taxes, which is good since I might have trouble getting my exemption. If you live outside the US for 330 days you are exempt up to $80,000. The problem is that I visited the states for 50 days, 15 days too many. If I have to pay full taxes because I consumed 15 extra days of american services I will be pissed. Going through the process only reaffirms my libertarian beliefs and makes me wonder how more people don´t share them. Looks like my travel to the states in the near future will be limited to 35 days or less. I celebrated our lord´s resurrection on Sunday by smoking about a pound of weed. We watched Kill Bill II, A Fish Called Wanda and The Corpse Bride and went to get ice cream 3 different times. Yesterday I was having lunch with my friend Michael who was visiting for a week. We were bored and rather drunk so we decide to go see a movie. Unfortunately, since going to the movies is pretty much my primary activity, I had seen just about everything. We settle on Failure to Launch. Yes, you read it right, we might as well have gone seen Brokeback, we were deep within man date territory. I like a good romantic comedy as much as the next heterosexual man; I think Keeping the Faith is a great movie. But wow, this one was bad. The best part of the movie was staring at Terry Bradshaw´s bare ass for 30 seconds... that bad. I left not feeling too gay about the experience. When Mike was my roommate for 6 months we would smoke and go to the movies at least twice a week. So besides bureaucracy and borderline homosexual activity, my last week has been painfully dull. At least Colin will be here in a couple of weeks to break the monotony. And by that I mean a 3 week bender of epic proportions. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, April 8th, 2006
3:31 pm	Argentina rant, future business plan The laptop cord that I ordered almost a month ago and that should have arrived more than a week ago still hasn´t. This country is never going to be able to compete with real economies because they cannot fulfill a simple act like shipping a cord from America in less than 3 weeks. Imagine if this cord was for a PC in an office. Like everywhere in this country, said office would be strapped for capital. And now because of a lack of a simple widget, the two people who would have worked on this computer cannot and the reverberations are heard throughout the entire company. Everything is like that here. At a car washing company, they would hire 5 workers and buy one hose instead of 2 workers and 2 hoses. Marginal labor is so cheap and there are so many barriers keeping much needed capital from entering the country. Factor that with a workforce that has not been taught to make simple economic decisions and you get a national productivity similar to Mississippi´s in 1890. It has gotten to the point where in order to actually talk to my realtor or my real estate lawyer over the phone I have to call them every 30 minutes. I send an email to said lawyer... no response. I call his office... he is in a meeting can you leave a message. The message is not returned so I call his cell phone. I leave the same message in his voicemail. I text him the same question. By the next day I will get some answer I wasn´t even looking for and the process starts all over. So therefore I have to literally show up at their workplaces to even talk to them. Meaning I am spending hours on subways and taxis when the technology is in place to prevent such things from happening. Could you imagine a client having to show up at a New York lawyer´s office to procure something as simple as an 8 digit account number. When 80% of the public are rejoices over the state taking back control of the water company (which had invested 8 billion USD in infrastructure over the lsat decade and increased service by 200%, while the state drove it into billions of dollars of debt) you know you are living in an economic environment that is doomed. Like many facets of life here, Argentines blame the US and West for their economic woes, when they need only look no further than their own incompetence. I have been giving serious thought to getting really involved with real estate here. My original plan was to buy an apartment, save up a year and buy another apartment... rinse, repeat. This approach is simple and has little to do with real estate investment in the states. I can´t incur debt down here because interest rates are like 20%. I can´t really offer shares of equity because my friends and, for the most part, my family are poor. So I was thinking about some time in the future visiting the states and taking out like a 75$,000-$100,000 loan. Obviously, I couldn´t get that type of money, putting poker player on the loan application, but I was thinking of having my mom take it out and paying her an extra 1% on the payments she would be making. I could make the loan payments with my poker earnings and invest the rents of my apartments in order to save up for more apartments. Hopefully by then my contacts (friends and family) will have enough money where I can start hitting them up for equity shares (a thousand here a few thousand there) that are safer and offer better returns than virtually any traditional investment vehicle. Tourism is growing here and it will not go away any time soon (unless there is another military coup), so I don´t think my market would erode. I could also diversify by buying properties in other cities/countries. I don´t want to rely on poker for the rest of my life (and I doubt that would even be a possibility even if I wanted to) and I don´t think I am good enough to be making the $200,000 a year that I would be wanting to by the age of 30 or so. But then again, like I talked about above, doing business down here is like operating in handcuffs, so I might get burned out on the idea prematurely. If you have money, real estate is undoubtedly the safest and easiest form of wealth accumulation and that rings even more true down here (partly because no one has money). Plus I think a business card with Hays Investments on it would be pretty cool. A pipe dream or does it have some legs, yall tell me. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, April 6th, 2006
1:55 pm	Last Night In Europe: Part II Whether clear-headed or in some way affected by foreign agents there are principles of common decency I virtually always uphold. I try to respect private property, I respect the intimate moments of acquaintances, I try to pair myself with a female companion above or not too far below my own perceived status in the male pecking order. Leave it to- what I had perceived to be- one of the dullest cities in Europe to facilitate the crumbling of these moral pillars. So after a pull or four from Emory´s flask (cheap bourbon, The Emory standby) we go out to buy a twelver of Carlton 16oz cans. Even with the high alcohol content, the beer tastes great compared to all the shit I was drinking in Spain. After 4 or so I am feeling pretty primed. After some dubious form of collective action, the group decides upon Cheers as the bar for the night. That´s right, a British pub modeled after a famous American pub, modeled after a British pub. So we head out at 9:00, a late hour considering how early the pubs close. Me and E order some shots of bourbon, but I am confused because I didn´t think shots were served in thimbles and I was pretty certain they didn´t cost $12usd. I scan the room to see if Sam Malone is there and ask him if I can start a lifetime tab like Norm. No luck. I drink a pint while E puts in his requisite attempt to be cut off within 30 minutes of entering a bar. He is going with the sarcastic smartass approach with the bartender, but I know it´s no use, as the British invented that approach. All the British girls at the bar are their usual beat-to-shit selves. There´s like 4-5 girls from E´s program. One is model-hot and way out of my league, 2-3 have boyfriends or are currently hooking up with some of the guys in the program. Then there was this red-haired girl with a pudgy face, a mouth full of metal and a body that could shed 10-20 pounds. She was certainly above average for her British counterparts, but in my current state I could tell I would be slumming that night. We have some uninteresting conversation, the glare of the bar lights reflecting from her braces causing me to squint. The group heads out to the dance floor and who and I to argue. Firecrotch and I start dancing on the crowded floor and that leads to rubbing, which leads to straight out grinding, which leads to me making out with 007´s Jaws on the Cheers dancefloor. (Apparently E took a picture I didn´t discover until 2 months later. For one of those entire months it sat on Tim´s living room coffee table.) After a while we all leave to head back to the residence together and I contemplate my choices. Do I want to keep drinking with E or do I want to go upstairs with Pippy Longstockings for some of the old in-out in-out. I decide Bro´s before Ho´s (actually that´s a lie, I realized I probably wouldn´t have gotten laid, as E told me at the bar she was a bible-beater. A BJ would be too dangerous for the future Hays generations. And I prefer to administer my own hand jobs.) So E and I sit outside his room and pound Carltons. E is on one of his patented passionate rants and I stop him to ask what the noise coming from the deserted common room is. We approach and try the door and it is locked. I put my ear to the door and hear the unmistakable sound of a girl moaning. With a giddiness in his voice, E tells me that two kids in his program who had always flirted, but never done anything, must have finally succumbed to their carnal instincts (as it was their last day abroad too). AS if deciding to have another beer or go watch a movie, we come to the quick conclusion that we should be watching this private moment of romance. We run to the other entrance of the common room and find it locked. I light bulb goes on in E´s head, realizing that the second-story room had a huge window facing the street. We run outside and E surveys the edifice of the Victorian-style building. The front goes straight up with few grip holds and below there is an Iron fence with sharp spires ready to impale anyone who fell. Emory is game. (You have to realize, just like Picasso had his Blue Period and Goya, his Dark Period, Emory was firmly entrenched in his Climbing Phase. Most of us leave that era at age 12, but every time I turned around, Emory was trying to climb something. Maybe it had somethign to do with the fact he could do about 150 pull-ups.) Some instinctual switch is flipped and I hold Emory back... I am pretty sure I saved his life that night. He spots a tree on the other side of the street and proceeds to scale it like a raccoon without saying a word. I note that even if I could climb it, the tree is not big enough for the two of us. While Emory perches in a tree with an eye-level view of two of his classmates having sex I head back inside and sit outside the common room, drinking a beer, deflated. I finish the beer and realize the rest of the beer is in the kitchen, which is connected to the common room and therefore locked. I wait patiently and hear what can only be the end of the coitus and run downstairs so they don´t see someone they just met enjoying the soundtrack to their romantic experience. I see E, "How was it?". "I couldn´t really see much", he says. I still think he pitched a double header in that tree. We walk back into the empty common room, looking for ways to entertain ourselves. I spring to action and tackle Emory. After 5 minutes of fierce drunken combat I come out victorious. Through all of our group´s afternoon WrestleManias on my trampoline I had never pinned E in my life. Perhaps there is hope for the night after all. Exhausted from the battle, we chug the rest of our beers. With 12 bowling pin-like empty cans on the floor and oranges in the fridge we decide to play a little bowling. The original game proves two easy to make strike after strike so we are left to ponder a way to toughen the game. I grab a coffee mug off the table and roll it towards the pin. With the handle hitting the ground every revolution, the mug provides the lack of accuracy and speed we were searching for. Other people notice our new game and join in. As we drink more and more we lose control of our muscles and E is the first one to shatter the mug on the wall behind the pins. Let´s get another!! The objective of the game quickly morphs into knocking down all the pins AND exploding the ceramic mug against the wall. I do my best impression of a fastpitch softball player and the mug flies 3 feet over the pins and explodes into a thousand pieces against the wall. We run out after about 10 mugs, the carpet covered in shards of porcelain. With no more china to destroy we shift our attention elsewhere. One girl mentions how another girl on the program would always bitch and leave notes when someone used some of her salad dressing from the common fridge. E sprints into the kitchen, grabs the glass bottle of the dressing, opens the second-storey window of the common room and hurls it down to the street. This man is obviously speaking directly with God, I think. I grab some eggs and a jay of mayonaise and hurl them onto the quiet Notting Hill street. One by one we empty the entire contents of the fridge (except the beer) onto the street below. The street is covered with ketchup and mustard, fried rice and week old pizza, shattered glass and plastic squeeze bottles. Somehow we missed a big basket of oranges; about twenty in all. Apparently I believe the fresh citrus aroma is needed in the common room to cover the musk of sex created only a couple of hours before. I wind up like Hideo Nomo and fire a 85mph fastball against the wall. The explosion is magnificent. Within 2 minutes all of the oranges have been exploded against the 3 non-glass walls of the common room. I stand back and drink in the citrus potpourri. I survey the damage. Broken porcelain covering the carpet. Twenty one-foot-diameter orange stains against the walls. Juice dripping down said stains like tears onto the carpet. Empty beer cans and orange rinds on top of the porcelain. And 50 pounds of perfectly good food and sauces laying scattered on the street below. E and I exchange nods, like a father and son surveying their newly built deck, and we know our work here is done. I head off to bed with a content feeling. The next morning I don´t even venture upstairs to see the damage in a sober light. I literally run out of the residence, thankfully not encountering another soul. Emory tells me later that everything was back to normal when he went up there later that day and no administrator said anything about it. And so ends the most debaucherous 6 months of my life with the most debaucherous night of my life. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Tuesday, April 4th, 2006
10:44 pm	Last Night In Europe: Part 1 I wake up to the screeching of my alarm. It is 1:30PM, I have a flight in 3 hours. Pain shoots threw my head as I remember the previous night. It was our group´s last night in Madrid. Our study abroad semester ended two days ago and virtually everyone was going back today. I didn´t get back to my apartment until 8:00AM, five and a half hours ago. I scan the dark room to see all of my belongings already packed. It is obvious the previous day I anticipated a scenario like this, just not the pounding head and pulsating liver. I am thankful my roommate already left the previous day. He was a douchebag and the worst person I have ever been forced to live with. I wake my señora up from a siesta to tell her to make me some breakfast. She would snap out of a coma if she even sensed me about to use the oven or open the fridge, so she isn´t that pissed I woke her up. I choke some food down, say my goodbyes to a lackluster señora and head off to the airport. I fly into Gatwick, which is about as close to London as Paris is. The train in is about about an hour and costs 16 squid. My flight leaves Heathrow tomorrow afternoon. I am crashing at my friend Emory´s residence. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (This would be the time when I interrupt my anecdote and give a no-punches-pulled profile of a new character. The problem is, Emory is just an all around nice guy. I am not saying he is not interesting, just I lack ammunition. True he once shit himself in a casino parking lot and used a parked car for toilet paper. True he had some weird Tourette's-like movement he always made where he appeared like a Tyrannosaurus Rex (deserves a post of its own). And 95% of the time you called his house -regardless of the hour- he would "be in the tub". But basically he is a stand-up guy that the rest of our group pf friends would try and find ways to fuck with because we couldn´t face the fact that he was better than us in just about everything that is important to a hormone raging high schooler. I should leave the task to Tim, his best friend, but at the same time, his biggest antagonist) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It is my third time in London in the last 6 months. Carrying the backpack I originally brought with me and two other 30 pound bags I later had shipped to Madrid, my muscles ache with fatigue during the quarter mile walk from the Notting Hill Gate tube stop to Emory´s residence. Running on 10 hours of sleep over the last 2 days and traveler´s fatigue I stumble down to Emory´s room ready to crash. It is 7:00PM London time (it gets dark around 4:30 in the winter as I remember). As I walk into his room I see him and his roommate taking pulls from a flask. "Good, a nice nightcap", I think. What I did not realize was that it was Emory´s last night as well. And even with all my logical excuses for not going out that night, he was having none of it---- Part 2 coming mañana, sorry for the tease. (Comment on this)
Saturday, April 1st, 2006
4:14 pm	So last night I go to this party my Argentine friend, Alejandro, heard about. We know the owners through a few degrees of separation. We get there to find a sweet apartment-probably the biggest I´ve been in down here- filled with about 150 people. All we brought with us was two small shitty bottles of wine, which I consume in about 30 minutes. The girls a looking pretty good; a dynamic mix of Porteñas, French, Colombiana, Ecuadorian and a few Americans. I eventually start talking to this Austrian girl. I would say she is a solid 7.5, but in my current state, easily a 9. Like it even matters though, in my current spell, to borrow a phrase from Kevin, I would fuck a hole in the ground. But she really isn´t bad. Large B cup tits, great ass, could lose 10 pounds, face was a little lacking. So it is about 2AM and we are covering all the usual bases, she seems mildly charmed by me. When asked what my job was, I gave the usual female oriented line of "Short term investments", so she probably thought I managed a high turnover hedgefund down here. She told me she just got dumped by her Argentine boyfriend, so I read some drunken rebound potential. The conversation dies shortly after and we head our separate ways to different parts of the party. By 4AM the place is dry as a bone and I figure I´ll just pack it up and hit the sack. On the way out the door I spot Vicki and give a last ditch effort by saying, "hey, you want to get out of here and grab a drink somewhere and hang out?" I don´t even break stride, assuming the typical, "no, it´s late, I think I am just gonna go home and crash." But to me surprise, she was down. So we head to this bar called Shamrock, one of the few bars I knew was open. We get another couple drinks and mire our way through another 30 minutes of painful conversation. The conversation starts to heat up while we discuss the concept of friends with benefits (she was a general proponent of the idea). Finally I drop the bomb with, "How would you feel about going back to my place and grabbing a drink; hanging out for a little bit." My fridge isn´t even plugged in, so besides having no drinks besides potable water, I have no furniture besides a bed and a futon (which was all I thought I needed). She didn´t even finish her G&T, so I know further imbibing wouldn´t be a motivating factor for her. She replies with, "That sounds okay." Only seconds later adding, "That actually sounds like a great idea." So I grab a cab, probably looking a bit too eager and we arrive shortly. We sit ont he futon and she is droning on about some stupid shit, while I put my arm around her and start rubbing her leg. My hand inches up her her jean-covered thigh. As an 18th century French fur trader would say, my hand was about to ford the Hudson to cross over into beaver country. I turn her head to kiss me. "No" she says calmly, not offering any explanation. In shock I retreat slightly to regroup my attack. A couple minutes later the same sequence occurs. I am just too dumbfounded to be disappointed. It is now like 6AM and not even giving her an attempt to excuse herself to her own quarters, I throw out a "well, it´s pretty late, you should probably get home." She mentions that we should get dinner some time, I have to swallow a huge belly laugh. I walk her down to the lobby and the angel on the right shoulder makes me accompany her a couple blocks until a cab appears. She gives me a kiss on the cheek as I stare ahead blankly like a confused dog. Again, I wasn´t even disappointed, I just wanted to know what the fuck happened. How does a girl accept an invitation from you at 4AM to go to some bar for a drink and an hour later to go to your house, only to wind up kissing you on the cheek an hour later. I am just trying to figure this out. I didn´t say anything offensive (I mean she asked me if I had her number like 5 times), there were no gas leaks in my apartment, no used condoms laying on the floor. Marking it up as a phenomenon, I smoke a little bit, thrash the bishop and go to bed. (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, March 30th, 2006
1:35 pm	80s Music Videos and Rape Found a gem of a link. http://joblo.com/index.php?id=10793 The 10 best(or worst depending on how you look at it) music videos inspired by 80s movies. I think Cyndi Lauper was robbed the top spot. I have that video on my Goonies DVD and am just floored every time I watch it. I can´t believe that all this shit went down less than 20 years ago. I think 20 years from now we will be saying the same thing about this decade. The 90´s were definitely a cool-down period. Like everyone said, "Shit we went too far, we better bring it down a notch." You see a lot more of bands just playing on stage with maybe some weird artsy shit in between. Now the 00´s with all the Britney´s acting like sluts and the boy bands acting like fags and all the rappers showing off their shiny objects, I think in 20 years, the 00´s will be the new 80´s. And secondly, shit like this really pisses me off. http://sports.espn.go.com/ncaa/columns/story?id=2389669 The same stuff happened at Vandy when I was there (with frats instead of sports teams). And a parallel can be drawn with Tim´s goose killing experience. First off you have the protesters. These protesters are for the most part minority women who don´t drink and spend their weekends making fun of all the stupid kids who go out and get wasted every night. You also have some gay men mixed in there, but they are mainly protesting because that is all they know (If you took a poll of all the Vandy students my senior year asking "Are you tolerant of homosexual students?" I would imagine 98-99% of the responses would be Yes. Yet, at least once a week there were a group of 30 people with a bullhorn, screaming about tolerance). Forget innocent until proven guilty, NO ONE HAS EVEN BEEN FUCKING CHARGED!!! There are people posting these kids´ pictures as rapists and racists (because the stripper was black). The fact that they ordered a black stripper in itself shows a high degree of tolerance. I would never order a black stripper, not because I am a racist, but because I find their white counterparts more arousing. Then you have some redneck Durham DA already painting these kids as guilty. Dude, you just had 46 kids take DNA tests, shut your fucking media-attention-grabbing mouth and let the tests talk for themselves. And furthermore, if a crime was committed, it was committed by 2-3 people on a team of 47. The other 45 kids were getting drunk and watching the white stripper while two pieces of shit raped the other one in the bathroom. The 45 innocent ones will still have deeply tarnished reputations for doing nothing wrong. Like Dukey #1 is going to think, "I am 99% certain that Dukey #2 is getting a blowjob from the black stripper in the bathroom, but I better bust in on them to make sure he is not sexually assaulting her." The University and authorities keep saying that they should never have had a party like that. What is wrong with a sports team getting together in a private residence, getting drunk and legally hiring 2 strippers. The underage drinking is an issue, but there is more of that going on on Duke campus than off. Bring whomever is responsible to justice (including the stripper if she is lying) in a quick and efficient manner and once there is a conviction sic the fat-ugly-no-social-life bitches on them. Until then, shut the fuck up. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, March 29th, 2006
1:29 pm	John: Though No Man Is An Island, He Is A Peninsula With A Very Narrow Isthmus Yesterday was a weird day. I wake up at noon (about par for the course for me) and I just can´t get out of bed. I had felt like I was getting sick the last few days, but that definitely wasn´t it. For some reason I was just really depressed. I had been in ruts before, but this was different; I just didn´t want to do anything but stay at home all day and lie in bed. So I eventually force myself up, dick around on the interweb for a few hours and grab a bite. No help; there´s still like a cloud hanging over my head. So I go to my 3 hour portuguese class and it sucks (All I want is to talk and listen in portuguese and maybe learn some grammar and vocabulary. Instead we do all the typical gay drills, like create a dialouge with a partner over some gay topic and perform it before the class. Or listen to some stupid taped radio recording from 30 years ago and answer questions about it. Don´t think I will be going back for the remaining 15 weeks. Good news is it´s only a waste of $80US). Then I go to an expat poker home game. Five other gringos there and I explain to them my profession and say I am willing to leave if they want me to. They say it´s all cool, since we aren´t playing for too much. I take about 400 pesos ($130US) in 3 hours, playing poorly and half-drunk. Pretty good time, but the guys were losers and I don´t think I will go next week. Feeling a little better, I go hang out with some Argentine friends and get drunk and smoke some and go to bed. I feel fine today, but I wonder if days like yesterday will become more common. I have been smoking more weed than ever, so maybe that threw some chemical balances out of wack. My laptop has been broken so I haven´t been able to really work for the last couple of weeks, leading me to be bored as shit lately. Maybe this perpetual boredom (no TV in my apartment, seen every movie out, etc...) finally caught up to me. There is a history of depression in my family, so I don´t think I should take any symptoms lightly. The thing is, I have a pretty sweet life. Money is not a problem, about to buy my first residence, living in an awesome city, plenty of friends, romantic life is pretty sad, but that has been the case for 23 years. I am all for better-living through chemicals, so maybe some anti-depressants would give me that extra kick. Alright, enough bitching and moaning. I am writing exactly what I hate reading in blogs. Last installment I did a brief profile on Kevin. A modern day Thoreau: a shining intellect who refuses to participate in normal society. Who else could make several passes at their best friend´s mom, while attending said mom´s daughter´s wedding (probably the platinum-standard of Kevin anecdotes). But this time I am going to turn the magnifying glass back on myself and do a self-profile of the humble writer of this humble blog. Name: John Age: 23 Profession: Professional online poker player. Amateur investor. Lays pipe from 9 to 5 on the weekends. Aspirations: Would like to get into real estate down here. However, since there are no loans down here, it does not involve near the skill as in the US. There are no debt or equity aspects to it. Just save money, buy apartment, manage apartment. Basically I would like to have 10 apartments throughout stable parts of South America and retire at 40 and collect rents. Outlook on life: A humanist who is constantly being disappointed. Lives his life in a fiercely independent manner. Ends up shooting himself in the foot by shunning potentially fruitful friendships and relationships. Religion: A strict agnostic. Believes there is no god, but also that there is no viable way to prove it one way or another. Not to be confused with an atheist, who KNOWS there is no god. Education: Graduated 30th in a class of 450 in high school. Graduated Magna Cum Laude from Vanderbilt University. Is an A-/B+ performer at every aspect of life... never great, but always above average. Most valuable skill picked up from 17 years of formal education is the ability to bullshit. Once made an A in an upper level spanish literature course while actually reading 1 out of the 9 assigned books. Has opinions on virtually every topic of discussion, but rarely facts and evidence to back them up. Sexual Persuasion: Heterosexual; though recent emperical evidence would lean toward asexual. Lacks confidence and communication skills with opposite sex. Rejects opposite sex before they can reject him by maintaining an air of superiority. Athletic Achievement: Very few to speak of. In traditional sporting events (tennis, golf, cross country, rugby, basketball) has invariable underperformed virtually across the board. Outside the playing field, some achievements include: breaking Emory´s nose with my knee on a trampoline, running over Emory in a golf cart, landing 2 or 3 good punches over the course of probably 4 or 5 lifetime fights (never one on one fights), had sex 4 times without leaving the bed, won the fast serve competition at a professional tennis tournament with a serve of 115mph. Favorite Beer: Sierra Nevada Pale Ale Drinking habits: Carried the "the line of alcoholism is blurred in college" mentality with him after college. Lives by the "I´m not an alcoholic, alcoholics go to classes." creed. Sports teams/individuals: Memphis Grizzlies. UofM Tigers basketball. St Louis Cardinals. Chicago Cubs (I know, I´m a hypocrite, but when you are 6 years old you don´t understand divisional rivalries). Any Vanderbilt sport where the participants have penises. Wait, any Vanderbilt sport where the participants have penises, except Women´s rugby. TN Titans. Tiger Woods. Andy Rodick. Roger Federer (just out of pure amazement). Hobbies: Masturbation. Smoking. Eating good food. Drinking alone. Watching movies. Smoking drugs combined with any of the previous things. Aight, that´s me in a nutshell. Not going to tell any humorous anecdotes, mainly because none come to mind, but also because I am tired of typing. I will leave you with a quote from Abraham Lincoln. -If you are a racist, I will attack you with the North. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, March 27th, 2006
12:56 pm	Kevin: True American Hero Some people have dozens of crazy anecdotes of past adventures. I don´t. I live a cautious life and usually weigh every decision carefully. I therefore cannot usually chime in while sitting at a bar with a group of fellow drunks about that donkey I punched in TJ or the time I purposely took a dump on a roommate´s bed for no other reason than spite. So to fill the void of humorous occurrences in my life I will profile some of my friends and relay funny stories that they (and invariably myself) are involved in. The obvious starting point is my friend Kevin. Age: 24 Race: Caucasian Religious Affiliation: Was once a practicing Catholic with a pro-life bumper sticker on his car. Now an evangelical Atheist. Education: Stellar high school record (though he could not participate in graduation ceremonies). Georgia Tech University, 2 semesters. Currently on his 8th year at University of Memphis. Through self-education and genetics is the smartest out of our group of friends. Famous qoute: Too many to choose from, so let´s go with, "They´re all pink on the inside!!". Shouted during AP BC Calculus in a class of 25 coed students with a 60 year old lady teacher. The context escapes me, but I am sure he worked it into the current lesson of derivatives and integrals. Aspirations: Well published Economics Professor who has been investigated 9 times over unprofesional student-teacher conduct. Most memorable athletic achievement: Masturbating 6 times in one night... prom night... senior year. Favorite beer: Anything I am not going to delve into any stories right now, so I will just leave you with a selection from his ill-fated blog. "Friday night I had nasty, drunk sex with this short, half-Mexican/half-White girl that I work with. She seems like such a prude when you first meet her. But when you get some alcohol in her she turns into a wild cock hungry whore. I called up my friend and told him, and he confided in me that he had fucked her too one night when we were all out drinking. The next day at work, was kind of awkward; but it was also pretty awesome. The whole time seeing her at work all I could think was "Haha! I fucked you." I don't know what it is; but, men definately have the upper hand after they've fucked a bitch. I guess its because once we've gotten what we wanted from the women we really have no use with their bullshit." Kevin: True American Hero P.S. These running profiles/anecdotes are not meant to embarrass the subject (well ok, slightly) and I will be lampooning myself so don´t be a fag about it. And no, I will not let any extra-sensitive information slip. Besides, no one reads this shit anyway. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, March 26th, 2006
7:07 pm	Sports Post Been watching a lot of sports lately, well, because I don´t have anything else today. I have watched about every single game of the tournament so far and I have drawn a few conclusions. First, college basketball is a joke. Each half has a potential for 16 breaks in action. I don´t see how conditioning even plays a part in the game anymore. I also don´t see how any amount of momentum can be harnessed by either team. Basically what is happening is the game is so short and punctuated by so many breaks that when determining "which is the better team?", (as a game is intended to do, to at least some degree) we are left with a sample size (the length of the game) that is entirely too short and a sample quality (flow of the game) that is entirely too poor. So what we see is a surplus of upsets by inferior teams and a surplus of blowouts by teams that should have played a closer game. Of course the NCAA (and TV stations) want this as it lends to the madness in March Madness. I am not saying I want to see less upsets and blowouts, just that I would like to see a playing environment where two teams can display their respective talent, not a crapshoot as it is today. Secondly, Memphis saved their worst game of the season for the Elite 8 apparently. All the commentators were talking about UCLA´s suffocating defense... that´s bullshit, Memphis got tons of open looks and was far more athletic than the Bruins, just nothing fell. I guess youth and inexperience finally showed its ugly face. I am officially adopting LSU as my team now, Big Baby is awesome. I just got done watching the Boca-River game at a neighborhood cafe. (Boca-River is the biggest rivalry in Argentine football and probably the biggest in South America). Boca got a last minute penalty kick to tie it at 1-1. Three red cards were involved and a drunk guy at the bar started throwing chairs and later rocks at the windows over the high price of beer (7 pesos per liter) so all and all it was a pretty good game. However, like all of Argentine football the game was sloppy and the general level of play was pathetic. Living in America you kinda take for granted the fact that virtually every sport you watch is played at the highest level in the world. All that is left after Europe, Asia, the US and even Brasil strip Argentina of its vast supply of talent, is the argentine first division. And it is not pretty. After watching English and Spanish league football, Argentina looks pathetic. There is always a hand full of players that manage to be looked over by Europe and end up being awesome, but all that happens is the public fall in love with them and they leave for the Benjamins next season. Alright enough ranting, I will come back with something more interesting shortly. (Comment on this)
Thursday, March 23rd, 2006
1:36 pm	Big News... I hope The story of a man´s life is nothing but a string of milestones; marks on a time line if you will. Birth; heaviest baby for the year of 1982 Baptist East Memorial Hospital (the largest maternity ward in a metro area of 1.2 million people) weighing 11 pounds, 10 ounces. First day of school; my grandmother, a licensed child psychiatrist, extensively coached me on the contents of the current kindergarten IQ test, leading to me scoring a genius level and therefore starting school at the age of 4. First car; bought about every teenager´s dream car, a Jeep Wrangler with big wheels. Still look back fondly on it. Losing of virginity; would have had more fun staying home and beating off. Graduating college; should have gone to a state school and shorted the nasdaq with the saved money. First serious job; borrowing the words of Sammy Sosa, "Poker has bean berry, berry goood to me." Which leads me to the current milestone. Barring something going terribly awry, I am now a proud homeowner. Unofficially I had been in the market to buy for about a year now, but I had been a pussy and inclined to take the easy 8-10% a year from my portfolio. Well, upon returning from my recent voyage through Brasil I decided to get serious about it. After viewing about 2000 ads and actually visiting about 15 apartments, I think I found a gem. It is a loft facing a quite tree-lined street in the Greenwich Village equivalent of BA. It has high ceilings (I hit my head at least once a day on doorways here). The contiguous window facing the street measures about 20x20 feet. The building is only 7 years old, which is good for a city where 80 year old buildings are quite common. And it is 53 squared meters (550 sq ft), not big, but spacious for a loft. A couple weeks ago I went and viewed an identical apartment in the same building. It was facing the back of the building; i.e. parking lot. The owner was asking 64kUSD and I was seriously considering it. 1.2k per sq mt in a loft in this area was a pretty good deal. A few days later I go back to the real estate agency ready to put an offer down on this other property in a different area I liked, but wasn´t bonkers over (it was just too cheap of a deal to pass up). As luck would have it, someone had just made an offer on it, making it off limits to me. So as I walk away deflated the realtor says, "Have you seen the specs on so-and-so address..." "Yeah I saw it a while ago... the owner doesn´t want to come down off of 64k. Plus I would like something facing the street" "No, this is a different apartment, same building, owner´s asking 56K" So I go over there and see it and try to hide the fact that if I had 56k on me I would have bought it right then. You know those HUD commercials where a token minority family walks into their first home they were able to afford through government subsidies. The wife starts crying tears of joy as the two kids scurry to their room to try and claim the top bunk. Well that same HUD house, nestled in a flood plain, on top a landfill, with its rice paper walls and drinking straw plumbing was more expensive than my new bachelor pad situated in one of the most high-demand areas in the 7th largest metro area in the world. Gonna pay 53k for that bitch. For those familiar with BA, ti is on Guatemala and Carranza in Palermo Soho. Two blocks from Santa Fe, 4 blocks from the Carranza Metro stop on the green line. 3 blocks from the strip of bars on Fitz Roy and pretty close to Plaza Serrano as well. so needless to say, I am pretty happy about the situation now. I probably just put a hell of a jinx on the deal, but I don´t believe in bad luck so fuck it. So if any of you pricks are in the neighborhood, I´ll have a futon with your name on it. Kevin sleeps on the floor. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, March 20th, 2006
10:16 pm	First Post So I am sitting in my empty apartment last night (and when I say empty I mean a lack of furniture, food, reading material, tv, internet, computer, booze and carbon-based life forms- excluding mosquitos) and I thought about restarting the whole diary thing. I had written about 30 pages in a notebook- mainly during my travels- that I always go back and read and enjoy greatly. The problem about writing in a journal is that the only person I am doing it for is myself. When I am the sole benefactor of activities I am rarely motivated. I am not saying I am some taller and better-hung Mother Teresa, just that I am extremely lazy and seriously lacking in motivation. So I came up with the idea to give blogging another chance. By no means do I think my life is interesting, but if I feel that at least a few people want to know what I am up to, and that, coupled with my own desire to document some of my experiences durig this time in my life, has led me to give this another shot. I am not going to delve into my history at all because the only people reading this now are friends. I will try and be as candid as possible about everything. For instance: today I had my first portuguese class for a 16 week course at The University of Buenos Aires. I really do want to improve my portuguese, but one of the main reasons I decided to take classes (instead of the much more efficient, and still cheap, alternative of private lessons) was to meet some local girls. I am not a huge fan of meeting girls at bars. Sure it is great place to go trawling for tuna, but I´m looking more to date than hook up right now. So anyway I walk into the class today and there are a total of 6 students. One other guy. Two girls over forty. One I wouldn´t touch with a grappling hook tied to a fifty foot rope. And another one that is a solid 5 out of 10. The 30 year old teacher is the hottest one, but she won´t shut up with the portuguese and let me through some game down. I like the class and all... good teacher, I know the most in the class, meaning not a lot of work for me (pretty sure I am not going to show up for tests or turn in written assignments anyway), and it is about the perfect size. Nonetheless, I am pretty sure I am going to change classes. My old roomate Michael took the same class and hooked up with two quite attractive classmates. One was Argentine with a bf and the other was a fucking blond Swede. Not that his success motivated me, but I think the classroom setting is about the best way to meet girls. And in my particular classroom setting, the girls represent the bottom 20% of porteñas. So it looks like I am going to alter my rejuvenated academic career to chase trim. Alright, I am go and try and update at least once every other day so stay tuned... I have some decent stories saved up. (1 Comment |Comment on this)