Friday, October 14, 2005

Time To Get Terrified?

Playin' a little poker, and so far Lady Luck hasn't quite kicked me in the stones. My stats are about par--played 35 hands, won 1. Saw maybe 2 flops outside the big blind. I'm down, but how could I not be?

On consecutive hands a guy hit a royal flush on the river then flopped quads. And got paid off both hands, betting capped on the river. Too bad I'm not playing on the Bad Beat Jackpot tables, there may have been some big hands when he hit the Royal.

But let's leave the poker a moment in order to keep life in its proper perspective--anyone else following the bird flu stuff in the news? Um, maybe it's time to build that Dream Bunker in the woods? I know, they say comforting things like "for the love of God, DON'T PANIC!", but then I heard Mike Leavitt (I think he's the head of the Department of Health and Human Services) on NPR saying things like avian flu could kill half a billion people, that it could turn huge cities into ghost towns, and that it could cause the end of civilization. And we don't have enough Tamiflu and/or other anti-influenza drugs to treat more than a tiny percentage of the population. And that an outbreak would be virtually impossible to contain.

They also said that it's unlikely such a lethal strain will sweep across the world anytime soon. But, and it's a big, big but, what if it does? Post-Katrina, I have zilcho confidence that the government will handle the crisis with any manner of skill or competence. For the moment we'll keep "Brown Alert" on standby.

We now return to our previously scheduled post--I just folded the Hammer two hands out of three. Sorry, I don't yet have enough breathing space to play it with the required manic aggression. The flops would've missed me anyway. Ah, there's a tidy pot won. Checked when I hit top pair on the flop, no one else bet, and that put them off when I bet out on the turn. My tens beat out the dude with pocket eights. That's a misread, bitch!

posted by Gene @ 11:03 PM   |