new game

Baccarat has a nice rhythm to it, and so far is much calmer and more comfortable to play than our other game. There's no brass dice cup, so it's also a lot easier on the ears. Whereas pan-9 feels like a linear game (one dealer hand vs. seven player hands) baccarat is has one dealer hand side by side with one player hand, and the betting is also set up in this lateral (if I'm using that word correctly) fashion. So it took a while to adjust the thinking to this spatial arrangement, but now that i'm getting the hang of it, it's fairly fun. The corporation player is involved in every hand so time goes by much quicker. We do the payouts as well, and I gotta say it's more rewarding to hand players their winnings rather than just watch the chips be taken away by the dealer. Also, it is the only game in the casino that has a video monitor tracking the hand results on a chart with lots of little blue, green and red dots. Call me easily amused.

epiphany of the week

If not too many people are attracted to you, it's cool, because you have much less chance of accidentally ending up with someone who is into you for one of the usual stupid reasons (you're hot, you have money, you're over 6'2", you are small and Asian, etc.) and so you spend less time confused by the confusing people who want you, and in theory you then have more time and brain-power to figure out who or what you really want.

"do you play baccarat, Mr. Bond?"

We're going to start playing this new baccarat game at work this week. It's sort of exciting in the sense that baccarat is a real game they they play in Vegas, unlike pan-9, so playing it feels less arcane and more approaching an actual job skill. Plus, of course, it's James Bond's game. A high-roller secret-agent serious-money kind of game. And we get to sit in the floorman's box (that is, seat 4 on a regular blackjack table) and do the payouts on every hand, so in theory it will be harder to get bored.

It's not exciting in the sense that, well, it's something else to do, and we're already understaffed and overworked as it is. So we're trying to provide a new service with fewer and less-satisfied people. But, having asked around among my friends, including my lawyer cousin who specializes in workplace issues, it seems that this is the case with most actual jobs. Which makes me feel a little better, if not wiser, and most definitely older.

32

It's my birthday today, and unfortunately I lost my wallet, but who really gives a pho.

I spent it with some people I love, and some people I hate, and that is what life is really aboot, noh?

I am drunk. I saw the Transformers movie. It kept transforming between a really awesome movie and an unbearably stupid movie. It was a headache that way. I wish they had used the transforming sound to indicate the shifts. Anyway, the most hilarious thing about it was that they killed the Black robot. Yes, as we all know, in American movies there's this trope where the African-American guy always dies, because the institutional racists fear the Black guy who is too useful or pivotal or whatever, but c'mon. You kill the Black ROBOT? And the four other separate-yet-entirely-equal White robots are left standing to chill in the aftermath? What the pho is that?

Jazz was the first Transformer I ever bought (with my parents' money). 'Nuff said.

well that was a nice dream

....in which, for some reason, you collapsed on my lap, and in an entirely literal manner we slept together, without congress but rather a sharing of weight and warmth, sort of like the ending of that Donald Barthelme story that I never read the beginning of. A dream about sleeping.

...and then I woke up.
Entangled with a pillow.
And it's July.
And hot.
And a spider bit me.
Stupendous.