"The sky is falling" is a phrase I've seen countless times today. I can tell you that it's not. Massive panic, excessive cashouts, fear mongering and even the biggest site blocking US players. This is the exact same thing we saw in 2006. I've been in the online poker industry for nearly 8 years and we've had a lot of ups and downs. This is just another one of the downs in the neverending cycle.

I'm sure a lot of you are freaking out. I don't blame you. Things look bleak. Things have looked bleak in the past and have worked out. I have no reason at the current time to believe otherwise. The bottom line is we are talking about a multi-billion dollar industry. Multi-billion dollar industries don't go away. Either someone will step in and take the place of these sites or we will see legalization in the US. Now that doesn't mean we won't have a period of no poker in the US. I'm by no means saying that. The fact is we just don't know. Speculation is not going to do anyone any good right now.

My advice to anyone that is marinating in fear right now is to take a step back. Take this weekend to unplug from the computer and the poker industry. It's not likely that much, if anything, is going to change between now and Monday. There is just too much to sort out now and it's going to take some time. Reading countless fear mongering posts on 2p2 will not do you any good. From experience, I know the 2p2 forums will be extremely negative and filled nearly completely with uneducated speculation.

One of the important lessons I've been learning lately is to not worry about things you can't control. This is a prime example.

Even if the worst case scenario comes to fruition (and I truly don't believe that will happen), remember the words of the immortal Bob Marley -
"Why do you look so sad and forsaken? When one door is closed, don't you know another is open?"

Things are going to work out.

Peace be with you,
Andrew

Well, my apologies. I didn't really think this series out when I started it. I just started writing. Now here we are and I've let the negativity of our economic woes fester for over a week now. No good. Truth be told, I was in the Dominican Republic last week soaking up a lot of dem positive vibrations. I wasn't about to be blogging on vacation.

A lot of people have commented to me about the title clashing with the content and I agree with the critique. There hasn't been much positivity emanating from this blog. I will get to that today. However, there is one more aspect I'd like to touch briefly on and that is the media as a whole.

The system we deal with really covers all aspects of life, but the media might be the most harmful to us. I'm not sure people realize how much of an influence media has on them. I didn't. It's especially true for people such as us poker players that are constantly plugged in. For the last 10 years, I've spent nearly all day listening to an iPod, on a computer or watching TV. I was nearly always open to influence from whoever I gave my time to. It wasn't until recently that I started to look at what I was putting into my head and how it was impacting my views and moods.

A small group of corporations/people control the majority of the media. They have an agenda. Everyone has an agenda. I believe their overall agenda is to divert our attention from real issues by using propaganda. Whoever is in charge wants to see a dumbed down public. I don't think many people would even argue with this point. Listen to the lyrics of popular music, the coverage of meaningless stories in the news, the extreme prevalence of garbage like Jersey Shore on TV. Does society inherently go in that direction or are we being directed that way? At a minimum they are speeding up the pace in that direction to hyper drive. A hell of a lot more people care about what Snooki is doing than if we are entering a 3rd war or going broke as a country. That's a fucking travesty. Like I said, I'm as guilty as anyone. Look at the single website I have linked on the right side of my blog. For a long time, I cared a lot more about what celebrities were doing more than what was going on in the real world.

Music is extremely important because there is so much power there. People listen to songs over and over and over without actually listening to the message. You may think that you're above being influenced by the lyrics of a song, but I urge you to think twice about that. Music is one of the main movers that enabled our culture to put so much value in money, sex and violence. We are told money is the #1 thing in the world and that we should worship money above all else. Even if you still don't think it influences you, it sure as hell is influencing the children in this country. They spend their days listening to Lil Wayne and killing people in video games. I'm sorry, but that has an impact on their views in life.

There's so much to be said about the media and a lot of it sounds crazy as hell, so I really don't want to dive too deep into it. The main point I'm trying to drive home here is to always take a step back and think about what you're putting in your brain. I also don't want it to be construed that I'm saying don't listen to Lil Wayne or play violent video games. I'm by no means saying that. Just understand what messages you're pumping into your head and go from there. Ultimately, those in charge don't want us thinking for ourselves. The sad thing is that once you do start to think for yourself, you realize how fucked up this world is. That's where my road to positivity comes in.

I've been making a lot of minor changes in my life lately that I think have really helped me. There is no quick fix to overcoming the overbearing system that we live with. The key is to realize it's there and to slowly make progress away from dependence on it.

I've been a slave to technology for awhile now. I'm one of those guys constantly checking his phone, always on the internet or watching TV. It's sad. It wasn't until recently when I started to back off it, that I realized what I've been missing. I've missed on out social situations because I've been checking my phone instead. I took a 2-3 year break from playing guitar because fucking around on the Internet was more fun. There was a long period where I never read a book except for an occasional nonsense John Grisham book on vacation. I know I'm not alone in this. A lot of my friends are the same way. One of my favorite examples is Guitar Hero. I have a number of friends that are incredibly good at that game. With the time they spent, they could have become damn good REAL guitar players. Now they never play guitar hero and that time was completely wasted.

I've been working on making a conscious effort to unplug and spend time doing things to better myself. Some of these things are:

• Address spirituality in my life. I was raised Catholic, but I've ignored God for far too long. I'm spending a lot of time and effort searching for what the real answers are here. I do feel like I have a renewed relationship with God and I want that to grow as much as possible.
• Do yoga first thing everyday when I wake up. I highly recommend people try this. Getting your blood flowing early in the morning really makes a huge difference. My flexibility has increased and I just feel better about myself. Being consistently active has countless positive impacts on your life from anywhere to mental state to fighting diseases.
• Alter the music I listen to. I listen to music literally all day. By eliminating most of the negative music and adding more positive music, I've noticed myself in better moods a lot more often. I'm not saying I'll never listen to some of the mindless rap I used to, but I don't want it on loop on my iPod. Subbing out Lil Wayne's worship of money with Bob Marley's devotion to peace, harmony and unity definitely makes a difference for me.
• Challenge myself with activities not related to technology. I've been playing guitar a ton lately. I used to play a lot in high school and completely got away from it. It's been really fun rededicating myself. I'm planning on playing a ton of golf this summer as well. Poker/laziness/TV have taken a big chunk out of my golf time the last few years. I'm going to play every chance I can get this year.
• Read inspirational/educational books. For instance, I just finished reading MLK Jr's autobiography. Wow. It's one of the most fascinating and inspiring books I've ever read. Replacing time spent watching junk TV with reading books like that can't do anything but good.

None of these things on their own are life changing. However, if you make enough small changes, you can really do some damage. That's the approach I'm trying to take. These are just a few things I've been working on. I have plenty of other ideas to introduce positivity and that's what I intend to address going forward with this blog. I just wanted to get my story out there so that people could understand where I'm coming from.

I hope people don't take this blog the wrong way. I'm not trying to tell anyone how to live their life. I'm simply trying to help people wake up to what I think the world really is and to tell them what I've done to help make my life better. If I can get one person to question things and make changes, then this blog was a success. For the world to change, we can only start small and hope it grows, because lord knows the change won't come from those in power.

I feel my foundation is growing everyday. It wasn't there 2 years ago and I didn't even know it. We have very hard times coming. This country is broken in a lot of ways and the path to redemption isn't going to be easy. The good news is that we can overcome the nonsense that is thrown at us and the hardships we're going to face. Let's all better ourselves now to be prepared for anything that comes tomorrow.

edit: Just saw this quote on my twitter feed and thought it was worth adding:
"If we make a steady effort, I think we can overcome any form of negative conditioning and make positive changes in our lives." - Dali Lama

Peace be with you,
Andrew

Ok where did I leave off? Ah yes, Dr. Ron Paul. Well Ron Paul basically got me turned on to the Austrian Theory of Economics. In short, the Austrian theory values sound money and very limited government intervention. This theory is the polar opposite of the Keynesian Theory that is so en vogue now (Keynesian is more or less summarized by a centralized power utilizing borrow and spend policies).

I spent a lot of time studying the Austrian Theory. This is not a new school of economics, it's just not one embraced by the mainstream. The truth is, they have a much better track record than nearly every other form or economics and they seem to take a much more common sense approach. As a side note, I think nearly everything in life (especially economics) is presented in an overly complicated manner in order to turn the normal person off. Terms like Quantitative Easing are tossed around because they are complicated. The Fed would never want to say, "Well, we are monetizing the debt of our nation by purchasing treasury bonds with money we are printing out of thin air." Instead, they say "Quantitative Easing!" Newspeak if you will, but I digress.

Anyway, the Austrian's correctly predicted the 2008 downturn. Their belief is that the main cause of our problems is the existence of the Federal Reserve. Basically, you had the Federal Reserve pinning interest rates at or near 0 (well below where the market would price the rates), enacting a loose monetary policy that lead to excess money being printed and fed into the economy and finally you had the Federal government not only encouraging loose lending standards, but also implicitly guaranteeing most home loans. It was a recipe for a disaster. The fact that 95% of people didn't see the crash coming is quite alarming, because it's really clear looking back on it. Sadly, there is still much debate over what the true causes were. I find that pretty ridiculous as it's not too complicated. One of the main take aways for me is to reconsider who is really an expert in economics, because a lot of "geniuses" completely missed the boat on 2008 and that's hard to ignore. Even Ben Bernanke, was quoted as the crash was imminent that "housing prices never go down" and that our "economy was sound." Yikes. This is the guy employing really outrageous policies that, gasp, aren't working.

I don't want it to go unsaid that everything we did that led us to the collapse in 2008, we are still doing. In most instances we are carrying out those policies with even more gusto. There will be a price to be paid for our behavior. The question is when? Let me dive more into our current situation.

The US is completely broke. There's no getting around this. It *may* be possible to fix our problems if we made drastic changes immediately, but it's very evident that will not happen. "Tea Partiers" is just a tag line. Not that I ever counted on them, but I know some people thought they could bring sanity to DC (sounds like a few years ago when we elected Obama). Our political system is broke and offers no real solution of change. People argue about our true levels of debt, but when you include our outstanding liabilities you're somewhere in the 50 trillion to 115 trillion range. Trillion is a big, big number, folks. USDebtclock.org goes on the high side with 115t which works out to a liability of over 1m per citizen. That's not a problem that's going to fix itself.

We are enacting inflationary policies. We're told deflation is a large risk and this is how we have to fight it. We're also told that inflation is very low right now. Of course, the US government is lying to us. The official inflation gauge, CPI, is a highly manipulated number. They have changed the way they calculate this stat numerous times over the years and the changes always lead to lower inflation numbers. Look at commodity and energy prices today and tell me we don't have huge inflation already occurring. Nearly every commodity you can find is at an all time high right now. It's not a good sign. Once inflation is so out of control that the US Government finally has to admit it exists, well, it will already be too late. Unfortunately, we cannot use the policies that were used in the late 1970s to combat inflation because if we raise interest rates we cannot service our debt. Hell, we already can barely service our debt. I believe the numbers say that if we return to a 7% interest rate (30 yr average, mind you) that it will take nearly 50% of tax revenue just to service the debt!

We aren't capable of cutting our spending. Debt spending is like a drug, and boy do our leaders love that high. Our military spending is a huge problem. We've dumped a ton of money into the black hole that is Iraq/Afghanistan. That's not even considering the lives that have been taken. What a disaster. And now our supposed anti-war president just marched us into a new, and unconstitutional, war. Entitlements are a big problem. There is no way we can peacefully transition out the entitlements. The right won't budge on military and the left won't budge on entitlements. The political will doesn't exist. It's a simple fact. Look at what the tea party is doing. These guys were supposed to make big cuts. They are out parading around and patting themselves on the back for proposing ~ 50b in cuts. We're looking at a deficit of 1.6trillion this year alone. Again, we need immediate and drastic action that isn't coming.

We're told our economy is in recovery. The US economy is not in recovery. Unemployment is another highly doctored number. They remove people who are "no longer searching for work." The real unemployment % is in the range of 15-25%. My thinking is 20% is a pretty good guess. We have puked manufacturing jobs for years now. We've been running a trade deficit for 30+ years and currently import 500b more than we export. Think of the US as an individual with a credit card. You can't sustain running up CC debt every year until the end of time. Life doesn't work that way. The only reason this behavior has been sustainable is because we are the reserve currency of the world. This allows us to print money to pay for things. At some point China will grow weary of receiving meaningless paper for the real goods they are producing. There has already been increasing chatter of the US losing it's reserve status. Frankly, we don't deserve the honor of having it. When we do lose it, it's going to be ugly.

The stock market is another great example of inflation. The newly printed money is pumped to the guys on Wall Street and it goes straight into the market in the form of speculation. The stock market is way overpriced. Compare QE1 and QE2 to the performance of the stock market. You'll notice it had about a 20% correction between QE1 and 2. The market took off again as soon as QE2 started. Don't look now, but QE2 is officially up at the start of June. I'm convinced we will see a QE3, because I don't feel they have the will to let us take our lumps now. They'd rather continue to kick it as far down the road as they can until our problems are so bad that we have no choice but to face them.

I think short term you're going to have the turmoil continue to spread in the Middle East and that will cause gas prices to soar. This will further weaken an already anemic US economy. When people can't afford gas or food in the US, there will be widespread civil unrest. This will cause other countries to start dumping the dollar which will further increase the inflation. Something like 65% of all US dollars are held overseas. If those return in a hurry, we will likely see that hyperinflation people are starting to talk about. At least that's how I think it plays out.

The bottom line is we're really between a rock and a hard place. How did we get here? Well, it took a lot of bad decisions over the years. Are we looking at the largest practice of gross negligence in the history of the world or is this by design? I don't know, but I find it hard to believe I understand economics better than someone like Bernanke. The guy is a brilliant guy. In my opinion, he knows exactly what he's doing and where this road leads us. As 2pac said, "they don't give a fuck about us."

I'm not sure this series has lived up to its title at all yet, but I hope it will. It took a long search for me to start to look at things in a different and positive light. My ultimate conclusion was to work to change how and what I valued and also just how I looked at the world overall. I'll get into this more with my next (and, I believe, final) post of the series.

Thanks for reading.

Peace be with you,
Andrew

First off, thanks to everyone that participated in the comments yesterday. Everyone kept it clean and we were able to have a great discussion. Much appreciated. That blog had two purposes. One was to vent some frustration with the Libya issue and the other was to gauge what type of interest posts like that would have. I'm very pleased with the response, so I'm going to write more.

In my last entry some people jumped to the conclusion that I had watched one Joe Rogan rant and based all my views off that. To be honest, I don't blame them. I opened myself up to that by posting the video. Let me tell you that couldn't be further from the truth. It's been quite the journey.

This journey has not always been a fun one. Along the way, I hit some low points, no doubt. The world was is not what I thought it was. When so many things you believe are turned on their head, I think it's only natural to become angry and bitter and that was absolutely the case for me. I eventually got into a pretty bad spot mentally.

Lately, I've been making some meaningful changes to my life that have lead to the best state of mind I think I've ever been in. On top of that, it seems to get better every day as my new lifestyle continues to evolve. I want to write about those changes I'm making, but before I do that, I think I should give some background. I debated for awhile if I would really dive into the issues I will mention below. Ultimately, I don't think that's the best solution. There is enough negativity in this world and there are infinite resources out there. It's important that people conduct their own search and come to their own conclusions. That's not to say I wouldn't be happy to point anyone in the right direction. If you read something and want more information or just want to debate a little, please PM me and I'd be glad to rap about it. Ok here it goes.

In my mind, I've always bought into the system. I was raised a conservative right winger and I always bought into what the Republican party said. The Democrats were always the bad guys. I was patriotic to a fault. When I studied abroad in 2005, I was one of a few Americans in my program. I can remember the political discourse I had with my foreign friends. I wasn't too kind to their anti-American rhetoric. The interesting thing was that foreigners seemed to love Americans but they despised our government. They were wise beyond their years! Unforunately, I had an "America, Fuck Yea!" attitude.

I've been incredibly blessed my whole life. I was born into a great family, always did well in school, excelled at poker during the most lucrative time, and have never had any earth shattering disaster occur to myself or anyone in my family. In essence, I never had a catalyst to question anything around me.

In hindsight, some of my actions didn't line up with my thinking of marching with the system. The big one being instead of following my father's advice (someone who I admire beyond words) to follow the path of accounting, I took a risk and dedicated myself fully to Cardrunners. That was a big step away from the system, but I certainly didn't recognize it at the time. I just thought I'd make more money that way and that was what it was all about. "Get money. Fuck bitches."

In the end it wasn't one event, but rather a journey down a deep rabbit hole that put me into a spot that made me rethink everything. Interestingly enough, at my lowest point, I wouldn't have admitted anything was wrong with my state of mind. In fact, a lot of people probably didn't notice that much of a change. I saved my angst mostly for my family, my girlfriend and the poor souls in the Cardrunners office. I wasn't happy even if I was lying to myself and saying that I was. After all, I had everything I ever wanted in a material sense. How could I not be happy? I'm getting ahead of myself though, so let me get back to the journey.

It wasn't until the financial collapse of 2008 that I started to pay more attention to the world. Obama was soon elected and was spending money like crazy. Obviously, as a conservative, I didn't appreciate Obama's approach at all. I became very interested in learning more. When the health care debate started to heat up, I really dove in. I was listening to a lot of talk radio and reading tons of articles. I'd listen to most of Hannity's radio program everyday and also an hour or two of liberal talk (usually Ed Shultz or Ron Reagan Jr.). The main thing I learned during this period was that the left and right were very much pitted against each other on nearly every point. There was a lot of hate.

During the health care debate, the economy was also going further into the dumps. I didn't know much about economics at the time, but I sure as hell would argue the Republican stance on any issue. As the health care debate wore on, I started to spend more time studying economics. Early on, the Wall St. Journal was my main resource. They have some valuable writers there, but they also have some really piss poor ones. Some of these awful economic articles I was reading were written by Republicans. Their stances didn't mesh their purported worldview and, more importantly, reality. Hmmmm. Why were they saying the things they were? Was there an agenda at play? I wasn't sure and I mostly just ingored really questioning these guys. They were on my team afterall. With respect to the economy, I knew things were bad at this point, but I still had plenty of hope. "It's all good," I thought. "The nation will see Obama is wrong and we'll get the Republican's back in power."

Sometime in late 2009, I got turned on to conspiracy theories. Uh oh. While, I had been poking my head down the rabbit hole, this might have been when the full tumble finally occurred. I can't quite remember how I started watching that stuff or even what the first thing I watched was, but I was sucked in. I was introduced to a whole new plethora of fucked up shit and I was sold hook line and sinker. I don't want to get too much into conspiracy theories now, but I will say a few things. They are very addicting. If you're in the wrong frame of mind, it's very easy to buy into them. Now, I'm not saying I've rejected all of these theories at this point. That's far from the truth. However, over time I've taken a vastly different approach on assessing conspiracy theories. It's not nearly as simple as watching a documentary on YouTube. While there is good stuff on there, it can often be hard to find it. There is a lot of shit and misinformation.

Somewhere around the height of my paranoia, it was suggested that I look into Ron Paul. I believe it was Andrew Swinney that first mentioned him to me (thanks buddy!). I didn't know anything about him, but as soon as I saw a few of his YouTube montages, I was hooked. He didn't talk like other politicians. I read a couple of his books (highly recommend "End the Fed") and spent a lot of time watching his speeches and TV clips on YouTube. It should be noted that at this time I was still listening to a lot of right wing talking heads. I started to notice their disdain for Ron Paul. This didn't make any sense to me. Ron Paul stood up for everything they supposedly believed in, yet they constantly and consistently belittled him and anyone that supported him. Hmmm. This was the first time I really started to question the system.

I'm going to cut this off here and pick it up in the next couple of days. This is getting too long!

Peace be with you,

Andrew

I've gone through a pretty huge transition in my worldview over the past 18 months. I've learned a lot of information that is considered controversial and will likely be painted anti-American. Truth be told, I love America, but I hate where it's headed. In my opinion, the most patriotic thing I can do is question the things we are doing that I dont' believe in. I've been debating for awhile about how much I want to share in my blog and how to go about sharing it. I still haven't come to a conclusion on that.

The bottom line is there is a very tightly run and complex system in place that is meant to keep us in line with what our government wants regardless of whether the government's actions are in the best interest of the American people. Part of this system is convincing people that there is a material difference between Republicans and Democrats. This couldn't be further from the truth and all you have to do is look at Obama to see this. He is supposed to be some Marxist leftist when truthfully he's really just a puppet carrying out the 2.0 version of the Bush doctrine.

One shocking way the left vs right paradigm has worked in the establishments favor is in the war department. I don't agree with hardly anything Obama has done, but I thought at a minimum he would be able to get us out of the wars. Yet, look at what has happened. We ramped up our presence in the middle east and now we are engaging in a new war. I'm shocked and disgusted that we would get involved in yet another country in the middle east. Of course, if you look at it from a realistic standpoint, we've been fucking around with plenty of other countries for awhile now. We've used drones to strike Pakistan and Yemen in recent months. We really don't feel that we have any restrictions.

The reason I used the word shocking was because the anti-war movement has been completely neutralized. Most of the anti-war movement is on the left and since their guy is in office, they are keeping their mouth shut. It's a perfect example of how ridiculous a left vs right system is. War is everywhere and it's a horrible, horrible thing. How can people that are truly against war keep their mouth shut just because we have a democrat in office. It sickens me.

Now, this is all in the name of terrorism. We're killing terrorists, right? Well, not really. We're killing a few but hardly any in relation to the civilian casualties. What is a terrorist Anyway? The definition of terrorism in the US Army manual is "the calculated use of violence or the threat of violence to attain goals that are political, religious or ideological in nature...through intimidation, coercion or instilling fear." That sounds eerily familiar to our foreign policy, does it not? Are the lives we take less valuable than the lives Osama Bin Laden or Ghaddafi takes?

The key in all of this is to step back, ask questions and draw your own conclusions. Or you can go the easier route and take anything you hear in the mainstream media and believe the opposite :)

I'll end my rant for now with that and leave you with this video on the war machine that is America. I will warn you that Rogan uses foul language. He really gets the big picture though and it's absolutely worth a watch.



Peace be with you

Super Bowl Sunday was a hell of a time. I had about 20-25 people over to my place. My roommate, Higgins (yea it's the 'Iggins pad), and I supplied a keg. Everyone else brought dip and other good stuff. We kicked off the festivities pretty early so we decided to come up with a way to pass the time leading up to the game. Our conclusion was a 3 cup tournament. What is 3 cup you ask? Well, it's only the best drinking game ever invented. Let me break it down for you. You can thank me later. The game is a take off beer pong and is very similar in many ways, so keep that in mind.

1. Rather than 6 or 9 plastic cups, you place 3 pint glasses (must be glass and same size) into a triangle on opposite sides of a long table.
2. Fill each glass with 12oz of beer
3. Both players on a team take a shot with a pong ball. If the ball is made, the defensive team must drink the entire beer
4. If the ball bounces off the top of the glass, the defensive team must catch it out of the air. If they do not catch it before it hits the ground, it counts as 1 drink (4 drinks per cup). The ball must bounce up (imagine a horizontal line on the top of the glasses - it must cross that).
5. The ball remains in play until it hits a real horizontal plane (think table or floor).
6. First team to eliminate their opponent's beer wins.

The defensive part really makes for a competitive game and you're basically always in the action in this game. Give it a try.

After the game, we had the idea to have a massive snowball fight on my roof. We even drafted teams. Unfortunately, I suck at drafting snowball teams and my team got destroyed. It was pretty hysterical though because the roof was very slippery. People were running around and falling all over the place. Since most of my team abandoned me, I mostly resorted to running over to the other team's side and attempting to whitewash people. It ended in disaster when I was snowraped by their entire team. I've never felt so violated... It didn't take too long for us to realize that my neighbor who shares the roof with me doesn't appreciate snowball fight noises at all. We were instructed that he had to work tomorrow and that was the end of the battle. It was ok because we moved to the mellower version of snowball fighting. We began pelting people walking by on the street. I live by a couple of college bars, so our targets were mostly wasted college kids. This brings me to my second recommendation of the blog. Participate in a snowball fight.

The setup in my condo is great for watching sports. I have 55" and 40" Samsung LEDs. The smaller one is on a rotating arm. It was awesome for the Super Bowl because we could angle the TV towards the other half of the room. It saved a number of my friends from having awful seats. You can also watch two games at once. Let's just say it encourages sports betting.

Like how I started a fire? That shit is blazing!

I've been playing a good amount of poker this month and I've been running great. I sometimes forget how fun poker can be when you're running really hot. I've also tightened up lately and it seems to be helping me stay out of some tough situations. My lack of play in January is at least paying off in that I have a clear head.

Figured I'd throw in a pic of my setup. I need to unpack that printer...

If you haven't seen Haseeb's blog, check it out now. It's one of the craziest stories I've ever read. Haseeb is a hell of a writer too.

Follow me @andrewwiggins. I mostly post links of funny shit/news and random observations consistent with what you see in this blog.

Alright, I've been sucked into the world of twitter. I was always anti twitter, but it's done now. I'm in and there's no getting back. It's addicting to try to get more followers. I'm up to 214 and my goal is to end the year with 500. I think I can accomplish that. I do need to make sure I don't use twitter as a substitute for my blog. There's only so much you can accomplish with 140 characters.

Follow me at @andrewwiggins :)

So I was out of the loop for the past few weeks due to the holidays. I didn't blog, do CTZ or 3 gentleman (new podcast up today if you want to waste 20 minutes of your life). My apologies. The holidays are over and I'm back on the grind.

Ok I'm going to use my twitter feed to help me remember what exactly has happened over the past few weeks. There was a ton of drinking, so I need the help. This will lead to the blog jumping around some, but that's just the way it is.

The most disturbing news for me was the fact that I was formerly a huge Limp Bizkit fan. You try to block that type of shit out of your memory and apparently I did a good job. I have very limited recollection of it. Unfortunately, my brother is still living in 1999 and carries around a giant book of CDs in his car. Among his CDs were about 10 mixtapes I made back when I was in high school. I miss mixtapes by the way... Anyway, most of my music was your standard DMX, Biggy, etc (sadly I was not into 2pac at the time). However, there were a few major surprises. I've obviously alluded to the Bizkit. I think I had at least 4 or 5 Limp Bizkit songs across the CDs. Words cannot describe how garbage that shit was. Just awful. I'm extremely embarrassed for myself.

However, I think the biggest surprise came after a Bone Thugs song ended. Hey heeeeyyy... BYE BYE BYE...BYE BYE. Fuck me. I actually put Nsync on a rap mixtape. Ha what a white boy mixtape. Keep in mind that in high school, I was 6'2 barely topping 150lbs and dressed like a clown. I wore a lot of Abercrombie. Nsync fit my demographic a lot better than Biggy, but it definitely wasn't cool to listen to Nysnc. I can't believe I had the balls to put it on a mixtape. It was like watching Power Rangers in 4th grade. I loved it, but I wouldn't let anyone know I watched it. It just wasn't socially acceptable.

Writing this blog made me want to hear Bye Bye Bye so I cued it up on Youtube. Maybe this song got too bad of a rap. I kind of like it. Ok I need to stop.

My mom is my biggest twitter fan which has led to some funny/awkward moments. Apparently she set up my twitter to push to her phone when I was in the WSOP and posting updates. This was my first new update:

Just went from following @brianchastings and @potodds3 to 12 people. Help me find more people to follow. Fuck Facebook!

I promptly had a message on my phone from my mom saying this: "Andrew, I'm getting weird messages on my phone and they have your name on it. I don't know what it is. Please call me as soon as you can."

Since then I've posted about gambling large sums of money, smoking pot, and other random nonsense. Needless to say, not exactly mother material. My mom felt like she literally had to comment on every single post I made over the holidays. Eventually I had to post on twitter about her non stop comments to get her to stop. It worked :)

Around 5pm cst last Saturday, I got a hot tip from my friend that lives out east. He told me that he was at the same strip club as Channing Crowder and the entire MIA def line. His point was that it was important I did not bet against the Pats the next day. I didn't get up in time to get my action in so I wasn't able to bet on the Pats. I sure wish I had. The Miami defense definitely played like it was hungover. They lost like 38-7 or something. As a side note, I did not determine why my friend was at a strip club at 6pm est on a Saturday. I like it though. Living the life.

I know I'm getting old because I got a coffee machine and wine for Christmas. It's ok. I'll embrace it.

I'm going to Charlie Trotters tomorrow night. Julia and I just had our 3 year anniversary and that's going to be our celebratory dinner. First off, I can't believe I've had a girlfriend for 3 years. It's nice of Julia to put up with my antics. Secondly, I can't wait to eat there. It's one of the better restaurants in Chicago and is supposed to be a cool all around experience.

Gonna work on more frequent but shorter blogs. I guess that'll be my New Years resolution.

"Happy Holidays is what terrorists say. Merry Christmas!" - David Rogowski, Philosopher

Ok Rogo is not really a philosopher, but I like the quote he had on Facebook the other day. The reason I use it is because it applies to the main reason I stopped blogging last year. I think political correctness has been extremely overdone in present day society. The merry Christmas term is a great example. We live in a country where I'd argue Christmas is much more of a commercial holiday than religious. It's also a country where 90% of people celebrate Christmas. Yet its gotten to the point where everyone has to say "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas" so that they don't offend anyone. Fuck that. I'm offended that people won't say "Merry Christmas." I make a point to say it now and I will continue to do that.

When it came to blogging, I got to the point where I felt that I had to censor my thoughts so much that it wasn't even worth writing anything. I'm a pretty crass guy and I think that needs to be in my writing for it to effectively showcase my personality/thoughts. I worried what my parents, girlfriend, and strangers would think if I just used this blog as a forum for my stream of consciousness. Frankly, it's an extremely legitimate concern. Everything you post on the Internet will always be saved somewhere. I recently decided that I'm going to ignore my concerns and type what I what. People can think what they want. Life is too short and this world is too crazy for me to really care. Here's to me not getting myself in too much trouble by saying something clearly out of line.

Currently I have the added bonus that certain people (parents, possibly gf's parents, etc) likely haven't caught on to the fact that I'm blogging again. Might as well take advantage of that :)

Black Swan - I saw Black Swan the other day. It's gotten rave reviews and a lot of people are going out to see it. I'd suspect it's mostly because of a much talked about lesbian scene between Portman and Kunis, but I can't say for sure. We showed up about 15 min early for a 9pm showing and it was sold out. Shit! There was only one store in the mall still open - bed bath and body (or some name similar to that). It actually worked out well. I'm burning through smelly candles like crack cocaine lately so I managed to pick up two new flavors. I don't know why I've been enjoying smelly candles so much, but I just can't get enough of them. Anyway, we ended up going to the next showing. Black Swan was incredibly weird and I wouldn't really recommend it. It was just too bizarre for me. Now, the acting was good. I will give it that. I also had my first erection in a movie theater since I was 10 and Leo was giving it to Kate Winslet in Titanic. That's right, the lesi scene was solid. Although, I must admit that I have a big crush on Mila Kunis. The scene is also probably not worth the price of admission. I'd wait for DVD.

Have you ever tried to open a glass beer bottle with your teeth? Nope, me either. I've always thought it's an incredibly dumb thing to do. I've also managed to perfect the lighter trick and I carry a cardrunners bottle opener on my key chain. The reason I bring this up is because my friend decided it was a good idea to try it during the Bears game last night. My roommate warned him that one of our friends cracked his tooth doing this a few years ago. He was not deterred. As he attempted to open it, there was a very loud noise followed by one of my friends saying that he was bleeding. The bottle opener did not believe it but quickly saw his hand fill with blood. He was bleeding bad. While in the process of opening the bottle he broke the glass at the top of the bottle and gauged his face under his lip. It was clear early on that he needed stitches, but he was trying to convince himself that he wouldn't mind a scar on his face. Thankfully we got the women to convince him he needed to go. He ended up with a night in the hospital and a few stitches. Kids, it doesn't pay to open a bottle with your teeth.

I have a sushi dinner with my old roommates and then we'll likely go out. I'm on a decent bender right now that is going to last at least one more night.

I'd also like to comment on Jeffscotts comment in my last blog. You're right that I was clearly generalizing and oversimplifying things. I'll work on not doing that in the future if I want to discuss politics. Although, I'm not convinced that calling congress a bunch of idiots is oversimplifying :)

I'll start with the feelgood story. This is a great youtube video that I came across about two weeks ago. I still laugh to myself when I think about it. I'm not sure how well it made the rounds on the internet, but I'm sure there are people who read this blog that haven't seen it. It centers around a Madden game where Greg Jennings breaks his leg, but does not leave the game. It's an instant classic. (Note: this is NSFW due to language)



As a side note, what's a large view count on youtube now? A few million used to be a huge feat, but it seems like any old video can easily cross the 1m mark these days. I think 10m is the new 1m.

I told you I was going to throw politics in here when I felt I came across something really worth sharing. Well I found something last week that I think is a must watch. This Wikileaks shit is a joke. It's a massive embarrassment for the US government, but strangely enough they are taking very little criticism. Everything is focused on Assange (the guy that runs Wikileaks). Assange didn't break a single law for god's sake. We owe him a giant thank you for exposing the corruption of our government. The US government has no right to secretly break the law and betray the constituion. Our government is drunk off power and is doing whatever the hell it wants in the name of terrorism. Unfortunately, congress is full of a bunch of idiots. There is one guy that speaks the truth on a regular basis and his name is Ron Paul. If you aren't familiar with him, I suggest you youtube him and spend some time. We can only hope he is our next president. Anyway, at least take 5 min and listen to this speech he gave the other day. He raises countless great points.

I just got done cleaning dried nacho cheese all over the front of my backpack. If that's not a sign of a good weekend, I don't know what is. It was an extremely action packed weekend and I think I'm just now starting to feel completely back to normal. Let me jump into the details.

Friday was the 4th annual Christmas party. These parties originated when Taylor and I worked out of a mostly empty office. We had a loft in Wicker Park that was about 2k sq ft and we used maybe 200 that happened to be in a separate front room. The rest was a long, skinny and totally empty space. It was basically perfect for a party. That party went very well and even survived a visit from the police. It seems like getting 150 people in a room together to drink with no permit would break some kind of law, but apparently not.

The second party was in a space we rented out from a bunch of hipsters. You'd have to be a hipster to be dumb enough to let 200 strangers drink in your home. I think we proved that theory quite well. The party was great but the hipsters were not too pleased with us. We left a big mess and one random dude managed to shit on the wall. Yea, he shit on the wall. Love that story. I think one of the more awkward conversations I've had in my life was when I went back to pick up the empty kegs. Of course one was basically full and I had to empty it in the bathroom. The girl that lived there stood over me and tried to make conversation. I wish she hadn't done that.

The last two years we have been smart enough to have the party at a bar. It's way less work/stress. The bar we've used is about the perfect size and it's also not on a busy street. It's good to not have a bunch of random people trying to get in since we rent out the entire bar and give away free booze for 5 hours. Last year we hit capacity and some people got stuck outside which kind of sucked. I was worried that would happen again this year, but I guess we've lost some of the freeloaders. I'm definitely ok with that. It was a lot less crowded and a cheaper bill. Also, nearly all the people I wanted to see were there.

Unfortunately, hardly any pictures surfaced from the night. I'm taking this up with Julia, because I rely on her to take pictures these days. She failed to get even on picture with me and her, which I'm not too pleased about. This is about all I got. Here's one where I look ridiculous:



Here's another ridiculous one where one of my friends is biting my wrist. This just shows how ridiculous it can get by the end of the night. The best explanation I can come up with is that she was trying to live up to her antlers. I can also see that someone was assisting in the biting by holding my arm out. Very weird, but funny nonetheless.


Saturday I mostly recovered during the day. I tried to recruit someone to play racquetball but had no success. I think that people were hurting too much from the night before. I find that when I can do some physical activity it really helps my hangover. I was not able to aid myself in that way. I ended up watching two episodes of Boardwalk Empire (great show by the way) and taking a nap.

We were supposed to meet up at a restaurant near the Untied Center (bulls) at 530. I was at least 10 minutes late and was the first one there. Stinger was the last on to arrive about 30 min late. Typical for poker players. No sense of time.

Bulls game was fun, but there wasn't much to note. Bulls got a solid victory. Derrick Rose is the shit.

We ended up going out to the bars and then came back and put in a few games of FIFA. I was up until about 430 that night which is typically out of character for me and probably dumb leading into day drinking before a bears game. This is also where the spilled nacho cheese occurred. I believe I can credit McNeil (of 3 gentleman fame) for that one.

Sunday was the Bears game. I'm even more pissed that I didn't get any pictures of that day. It was a friggin blizzard outside. We got there about 3 hours early to tailgate. Taylor has some buddies that tailgate every game and really do a great job. We had fun tailgating, but damn it was cold outside. Bears got smoked and we left around halftime. I'm not one to leave a game early, but when it's 33-0 and below 0 wind chills, I think it's time to leave. I won't even get into all the money I stupidly had riding on the bears that day.

Overall, it was a really good weekend

OT - New TI album is good. I didn't really like it after the first listen, but it's really grown on me. There are good songs with Kanye and Em if you like those guys. Either way, it's worth a purchase.

I think my next entry will be some pics of my place. It's nice and clean now and I don't know how long it will remain that way.