This Blog is Undead

Poker Blogs are dead? Give a shit? There are more interesting posts out there than I can skim and plenty that are more interesting that I don't know about.

This blog is dead? Very probably. And about that I do give a shit. I am very well aware that there is little of interest on these pages and that each enthralling post comes after at least two weeks of excruciating silence. Unfortunately I don't give a large enough shit to do much about it.

Now I'm no longer a student I don't have 23 spare hours a day to do very little, play poker and blog with. I'm now a mature, married, home-owning, cat-stroking city-dweller. If I have more than 30 minutes spare time then I'll likely try to squeeze in some hours at the virtual felt. Whereas when I was a student, if I managed to tear myself away from the tables for 30 minutes then there was a remote chance that I'd do some studying.

My current situation leaves very little time for reflection or worthwhile blogging.

This, however, might just be one of the few occasions that you get a post of more than 300 words. Mostly you should thank blame the six empty cans of finest Efes Pilsner and my surprising lack of motivation to play drunken HORSE on PokerStars...

So where to start on this drunken ramble?

I'll give a passing reference to my comment on BG's blog. It's unlike me to voice an objection like that, but I think what caused my comment was my regret that I thought I'd found a way of thinking that I believed to be absent from the intelligent open-minded bloggers that I read. I was happy to find out that I had misunderstood.

Speaking of extreme satire: if you're not reading The Capgras Delusion then you're missing out. I just hope that you're able to do what I didn't when reading BG's post! The Capgras Delusion has been a bit quiet of late, but I guess with medical finals coming up that can be forgiven. There are plenty of amusing archives to keep you diverted until he's back. If you haven't read him before then read this introduction (it's a damn shame that his previous blog isn't archived publicly).

Moving on...


Hang on. I don’t' have anything else to say. You're gonna have to bear with me while I take a trip to the refrigerator.

So yeah, getting back to the title of this post. I guess my point is that no matter how little I have to say or have drivolous it is, I most certainly will continue to post. Thankfully I chose a suitably ambiguous name for this blog, such that if I ever stop playing poker (God forbid*) or have a massive life changing experience, then anything else I decide to write about can be legitimately chronicled on here.

I guess what I'm saying is that this blog is not really about poker. It's about me. It just so happens that over the last few years - and especially now - the only thing that I'm able or prepared to share is my poker life, and that happens to be fairly boring. An average blog post of mine can mostly be summed up thusly...

In my spare time I play poker (mostly online). I make more money playing poker than by doing anything else and it's fun, but not enough to justify quitting a job that I enjoy, pays well enough and could be the beginnings of a very exciting career. Insert a random life fact. End blog post for that month.

Doesn't make for very interesting reading, does it?

I made a note on a scrap of paper whilst writing that last few paragraphs that I was about to talk about religion. I'm not sure that I really want to do that or am in any sort of state to string together a reasonable or articulate point, but what the fuck. I must have had a reason for writing it down and you've made it this far so you can probably get through anything.

Ah, I think I remember where I was coming from. (*see asterisk above) It stemmed from my use of the words "God forbid".

I was brought up a Christian. My parents, especially Mum, were regular Church goers (Church of England) and both were keen campanologists (bell-ringers). It was just part of my culture while growing up. I hung around while my parents rang bells and then I went to Church. It was just how it was. My mother's father was a Priest and although I don't remember my own baptism (obviously) I remember the sermon he gave at my cousin’s. It was based around the presentation of a tooth-brush. The point was that you wouldn't leave your children to grow up making their own decisions about whether they should clean their teeth or not. It's something you would instil in them and insist upon. Likewise you should instil God in them.

It makes sense really, even now. Why would a parent not want to instll in a child their beliefs? And so I grew up as a Christian. I never really questioned it even though I may have been bored at Church and resented having to attend.

When I was sent away to boarding school at the age of 9 on a choral scholarship, church and - more crucially - institutionalised religion was even more a part of life. We rehearsed twice daily and sang at daily services. We sang beautiful music and we sang it fucking well. Although the choir didn't have a longstanding reputation, at the time we were easily one of the best choirs of its kind in the country.

So, at choir school my religious upbringing was reinforced, but this time I enjoyed it, loved it, and eventually began to believe in it.

At the age of 13 I went to secondary school (on both a music and academic scholarship) and although it was very Anglican (Church of England) in founding and in commitments, it - if by its size alone - allowed for much greater flexibility. Whilst I was also a member of the Chapel Choir, it was of a comparatively terrible standard to choir school, so quickly the musical magic that religion had previously held was lost.

A few years of poor choral performances, teenage hormones and excellent teachers who encouraged you really to think for yourself, and I was already a fledgling atheist.

It's hard to put specific landmarks on my transition from Christian to Uninterested to Disinterested/Agnostic to Atheist. Much of the latter transitions had to do with inspiring science teachers and the beginnings of independent readings/preparations for university interviews.

The six months I spent in Kenya really opened my eyes to the dangerous power of institutionalised religion. It was only in the face of a blind faith, which allegedly was the same as my own faith (albeit recently rejected) that I was alerted to the dangerous power of irrational unified belief.

It was only a few months after coming back from Kenya that I went to university at Oxford. I met a wonderful girl who I later fell in love with and married. She was from a wonderfully new and un-experienced (by me) culture, although mostly what attracted me to her initially was that she was well fit! Beyond her good looks I found everything that one would want to before falling in love. Most pertinent to this discussion ramble was our shared worry over institutionalised religion. The difference was that she came to the argument from an Islamic perspective.

*going back to the asterisk above... what initiated my desire to post all of this religious ramble in the first place is my choice of words when wishing to express a desire to prevent something from happening ("God forbid"). Those two words are the first that came to mind, presumably due to the first 13 years of my life when I was conditioned to think that way. Immediately after thinking those words I searched hard for an alternative. After all I'm a bloody Atheist, I can't possibly use that phrase! Unfortunately the first alternative I came up with was "Allah forbid". Shit. Score one point for rebelling against one's upbringings. Score minus five points for condoning any kind of institutionalised religion.

So then I decided to stop worrying about how I came across and just accept my social conditioning but accompany it with a massive disclaimer, which if you've got this far, you're already very bored with.

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I’ve now started drinking water in an attempt to lessen tomorrow’s hangover which might be an indication that I could come to a stop.

If you expected any more discussion or any kind of meaningful conclusion then I’m afraid you’ve come to/ended up at the wrong place.

Therefore you now have a choice: be either satisfied with what you have read or dissatisfied with it.

I’m going to bed.