Poker Dreams

Spike is learning to speak American.
The Admiral refrained from spilling news of his political interactions at East Bend.
TW brought gifts, tequila to be precise.
Frisco or Hurricane learned how to pass rather than bet.
JD continues to improve his homebrew.
PG blabbed on about the end of time, high school special ed classes, and movies.

1) I dreamed last night that Jon Stewart of the Daily Show was helping me deliver very heavy newspapers (with double inserts).  We were delivering on foot to a rural, but heavily populated, area. People were sleeping nearby, outside I guess.  At one place we were stuffing in papers, a man woke up and grabbed me by the throat, thinking we were intruders, I guess.  I happened to be holding a heavy hardbound book (suddenly, we were no longer distributing newspapers but something like school yearbooks that weighed 20 pounds -- my fortieth high school reunion is next year, maybe that's it).  I slammed the book into the head of the man choking me -- whap!  whap!  whap what whap! -- without feeling any emotion like fear or even concern.  He fell down and Jon Stewart and I took off down what had become a little pathway with tight corners.  It was similar to the narrow stairway from the basement behind the altar at East Bend Mennonite Church. It may no longer even exist, but it is the pathway one takes to wash feet after communion or to approach the altar to get married.  It is kind of a cold place, smelling of concrete or school glue.  Jon proceeded on, but I ducked into a closet.  The man I'd knocked down got up, chased past the closet, and pursued Stewart. He came back and looked for something just outside the closet.  I closed my eyes so he wouldn't see me. 

2) Some grouping of hippies in a rural area were living in the towns and villages and railways.  I took off on my own to explore.  I was riding a yellow motorcycle, going down alleys and following road signs and down roads being repaired by work crews.  I asked one of the workers if this chopped up asphalt resulted in a road, even a dirt road, down the way.  The boss, a skinny old man with a tie, came up to me and started to beat on me.  I just wanted to drive down the road.  I refused to be angry.  I said I would sue him and waited for the lawyer to come, right there.  She did, and shook her head at the antics of this guy -- who may have been the town mayor or a big corporation CEO -- and wished I'd just let it drop.  Next thing I knew, I had discovered an old abandoned castle in a corner of the town.  It was empty inside.  Johnny Brandon and two girls -- maybe Laurel and Nancy -- were there as well as a bunch of cool hippy friends.  Even the Grateful Dead were there.  It was a big castle.  I kept saying and doing the most embarrassing things, winning none of the cool hippy chicks, whereas Johnny knew all the ways to get the chicks.  I think I was trying to to be funny, but wasn't.  Johnny kept trying to tell me something.  Something was wrong with me, but I didn't care.  Something came flying through the air -- like a big football sized rubber bullet -- and hit me in the head.

So there you have it, I am a closeted violent socially inept misfit with a paper route and a little yellow motorcycle.

Now, as for poker, Frisco or Hurricane returned and lost even more money. Spike had a turn of fortune and zoomed from out of the red into third place.  Everybody is again in the black.  TW had the good sense to win with a straight flush only when PG had left the room. 

The same winning and losing hands kept manifesting themselves.  Although the composition of the players (and even the table) had changed, the hands were the same.  It was like a dream.  Next week, we may even know the cards we are being dealt before we get them.

Since PG and JD continue to debate the method of the anarchy round, perhaps it would help to state the three components of anarchy (according to Eric Anglada):

1) No domination of one over the other
2) Continual questioning of authority
3) Mutual aid

Maybe that didn't help after all.

Question (after contemplating Richard Powers' book The Echo Maker -- http://lastgoodname.blogspot.com/2006/12/is-there-echo-in-here.html):

Is all sense of identity an illusion?  You are the Man of the Year.
--
Even baseline normality has about it something hallucinatory. -- Richard Powers, THE ECHO MAKER