I bet the #1 reply will be this

(__, Sat 9 May 2009, 13:23, Reply)

The best bet I ever won
It was at school. I had a friend who was, to put it politeley, a bit intellectually challenged. She had the best packed lunches ever, and I spied her bottle of pre-packed drink that was infinetley better than my bottle of squash. The wager went as follows:
Me "If I can drink your juice in one, can I have it?"
She "LOLZ you can't do that. Ok"
Me *Drinks juice in one go*
Her "Fucksocks"
Good times.
(allthatglittersisglitter, Sat 9 May 2009, 12:59, Reply)

One of the most salient things I learned in school
"The lottery is a tax on the stupid"

And it is. It really is.
(Merrep, Sat 9 May 2009, 7:18, 9 replies)

With a little help from my friends...
After my girlfriend introduced me to internet poker I found myself keen to play some real-life hands for real-life money. My friend Rhys had a regular game every Thursday with some friends of his with a $10 buy-in, so I went along for a few weeks.

For the most part, I held my own without really winning much, although I did draw one game and get my $10 back. As time moved on though, I discovered that Rhys is a dirty, dirty bastard on the cards. Not that he cheats, but he is a master of mindgames.

His favourite (and admittedly, most successful) trick to play on me was to wait until I was distracted by conversation and a few beers and get my attention thusly:

Him: Grant! Your turn!
Me: Oh yeah, right...(ponders options)
Him: You should fold.
Me: Really?
Him: Yeah, you should. I've got a damn good hand.

Seeing as how I never paid enough attention, was half-drunk and also well-aware that Rhys folds practically every hand he has, I would usually agree that I probably should fold. Did he ever have a better hand than me?

Did he fuck.
(ElGranto, Sat 9 May 2009, 4:53, Reply)

oh how i loved the internweb casinos
The wife convinced me to try this a couple years ago.

Deposit $100 in some dodgy online casino, and they'll give you $100 to match your deposit. Some give more, some give less. The catch is, you have to wage $1000 or more, depending on the casino.

The idea is that if you play blackjack by the book, you should be able to take that $200, and walk out with about $190, clearing $90 in bonus money.

We must have hit 90% of the online casinos, and over a period of a year, we easily earned $5000. $3000 of that as from cards.

One night, the wife deposited money into a casino, thinking she could play cards. As it turned out, it was a 'slot' only casino. So, she went to put the boy to bed, I sat down, made a couple spins, and won $1200 on one spin. We quickly cashed out.

Later, at another dodgey casino, we deposited our $100, made a couple bucks, and withdrew out cash (we used Net Teller at the time). We received the $100 and some, but also a transfer for $1000. I've no idea where that money came from, or why, and apparently these sorts of operations do not spend much on paying qualified accountants. I certainly didn't question where the money came from, and figured, if some kind gentlemen want to inquire all the way from Gibralter, I'd be happy to return their money.

Doesn't work as well nowadays, as it's a lot harder to transfer money to these casinos from the States... It's not illegal to gamble, it's just illegal to transfer money to the casinos... bastards... also, while you may only have to wager $2000, typically casinos only count each dollar betted on blackjack as 1/10th or less of a dollar.

Consequentially, I now know every instance of when I should double, split, stay, and hit.
( Foxglove -- it all ends in tears anyway..., Sat 9 May 2009, 4:00, 2 replies)

Pachinko
At this point I can't recall how much I knew about the "game" going in. We were out on a date and found a countryside pachinko parlour flashing away next to the river, and decided to brave the smoke stink and clatter. We promised a personal limit of 500 yen ($5.00 USD) each.

You put your 500 yen coin (or 1000 yen note) into an arcade-style machine that vends out a small number of metal balls, which you "flush" into the machine again in the hope that they'll fall into little holes, producing more balls. You sell the balls back to the parlour if you've got any at the end of the day. There is much talk about "loose pins" which gives the illusion of control over your balls and the direction of bounce. You can easily spit a day's pay into a machine in less than a minute, so strategies range from conservative ball-at-a-time pea shooting to funneling a steady stream of cash and balls into the machine for 30 minutes or an hour and keeping a bucket under the machine to catch overflow.

We sat down next to each other and put our 500 yen coins into the machine. Ten minutes later we were both changing our overflow buckets out and buying 800 yen drinks from a waitress. For a straight three hours we received side-by-side flows of balls. I have no idea what I did right or wrong but on the assumption that it couldn't continue forever I chose to stop when the clock hands reached a certain point, and my date followed a few minutes later.

We stood up wordlessly, took our buckets of balls to the counter, and cashed out for 42,000 yen and change. Crazy.

Only once we were out of the parking lot and on our way home did my date turn to me and say we may have dodged a bullet -- security had their eyes on us the whole time and had evidently been making calls and creeping toward our chairs for the whole three hours. She had been scared out of her mind but was more afraid of suddenly standing up and insisting we leave.

She said that nobody just starts winning right out the gate, no two people can enter and win exact equal amounts consistently side-by-side for an entire evening, and other things. She said they might have approached us at some point, might have kept us from leaving or cashing out. She said they most certainly would be checking the machines and keeping our photographs at that location for a year.

Ah, Japan!
(ab1, Sat 9 May 2009, 3:15, 1 reply)

All I will say
is that if you're certain you've won, check that you have the king and 3 of diamonds, not the king of diamonds and the 3 of hearts. Because if you do, you will have gone all in on a king high rather than a flush, and have been called out.



Because this hasn't happened to me.

Nope...

(fucking poker)
( MatJ LOOK, Sat 9 May 2009, 2:38, Reply)

It was one of those rounds where nobody folded
The bets kept coming and coming, everyone was eying each other up trying to read the bluffs in our faces. But the sheer amount at stake kept the sweat dripping of our collective poker faces.

The next card came up

"im in, raise by 10"

one by one all the other players folded till it was just me and him. I looked at the bet trying to remain calm, this guy had owned the table all night. I calmly downed my single malt in one, and replied

"all in"

neither of us was backing down this was it. He slapped his pocket aces down and reached for the winnings. Wordlessly I raised my hand to stop him the revealed my hand, a flush on the river card.

All the quality street was now mine. 2008 was the best boxing day ever.
( willenium Fist bump for verification, Sat 9 May 2009, 1:52, 3 replies)

A few years back, I saw an item on ebay on £5 - "Make £200 a day on online roulette or double your money back"
I thought "well fair enough" and bought it.

Downloaded the guide and set to work. It involved signing up to 888.com, depositing £200, getting the free bonus £200, withdrawing the original $200 and ending up with £200 bet with at no cost to myself. I think that alone would be worth the £5 - just place half on red, half on black and you'd get back the £200 but counted as winnnings.

But there was more. It was basically the Martingale system, but not based on red and black; instead based on three number ranges (1-12, 13-24 or 25-36). It was also cleverly (but pointlessly) punctuated with rules such as "wait for 8 goes where a range does not appear". Now the main problem with Martinglage is that sooner or later you run out of money, as apart from anything else there is a maximum bet limit. This didn't get round that, but instead of doubling the bet, it was increased by just enough to make a profit if you won. Because it didn't double, it did increase the amount of bet increments before you got to that limit.

I know what you're thinking - "Martingale, what a load of crap". Well, true, it's not sustainable, but until you lose it works and it's better than just randomly placing bets all over the place. Don't get me wrong, when it goes against you it cripples you, but since the only thing I had to lose was free money, well...

First day I tried it - £90 profit. Second day, £120. I was ecstatic; I had finally found a system for making money that worked. I could have probably made more per day, but I was so astounded that I was almost shaking and I think I would have given myself a heart attack.

Because I'm not greedy*, I stuck to the system rigidly and withdrew every penny of profit as soon as I made it, always leaving the £200 as a working balance. Because it was working, I introduced my friends. Apparantly they can't read; why follow the system, eh? Why not bet twice or three times what it says here and get three times the profit? Because you'll lose, that's why. Fortunately none of them lose any real money because of the bonus matching.

Of course, as with all Martingale systems, my luck ran out eventually. But by that time I'd already banked over £600 in less than a week. I was disappointed, and I think I half believed it was a geniune system and not a rehashed Martingale system. eBay feedback of course would be left after the first day of genuine amazment of making a risk free £100, so the fact that at some point you would need slightly more than a few hundred quid to continue using the system wasn't revealed there.

I then became annoyed at the eBay seller for selling a system that "stopped working" after a week. Before contacting him, I decided to check the guide again. It was then that I noticed the URLs to the casino site looked a bit strange, with something like ?aff_id=1273981 stuck after each URL. A bit of googling revealed that 888.com offered an affiliate scheme where they would pay affiliated £150 for every new user who signed up and bet at least a certain amount of money. This bloke was selling about five of these guides a day, judging from the feedback. The fact they had left feedback indicated that had bet money and he had made £150 from them. That was getting on for a grand a day! What a racket this guy had. I doubt he'd ever actually tried the system.

My feelings of anger turned to adminiration and jealousy. If he could do a racket like this, so could I. I would set up a website "reviewing" casino "strategies" and make money from linking people to the casinos. My laziness got in the way though and I still haven't got round to it. Four years later.

Best £5 I ever spent though.

*I am actually greedy
(Cuthbert Annihilator, Sat 9 May 2009, 0:12, 2 replies)

Through the barricades
Many Christmasses ago, after a few Sherrys and Snowballs I bet my other half that Steve McQueen would succeed in his motorcycle bid for freedom in The Great Escape.
( Ethel Le Crisp, Fri 8 May 2009, 23:55, Reply)

Preston North End
About 20 years ago a drunken night out resulted in a bet with a mate that would involve me having Preston North End tattooed across my arse in the unlikely event that they ever made it back to the top division in british football. At the time they were at the bottom end of the fourth division.
By this time on Monday i'll know if I have to have a tattoo.
(coobeastie Used to Be in Evil Gazebo, Fri 8 May 2009, 23:27, 1 reply)

Enforced gamble
We were in Las Vegas for a conference and all my colleagues were hitting the tables and throwing more money around than I'd ever be comfortable doing. But I was in Vegas! I had to have at least one try! Poker or roulette were too much of an unknown to me, so I went for what I'd been brought up on; one armed bandits (thanks to my Grandma's little flutters on the penny machines in the summer holidays). So I stuck a couple of dollars in to the nearest machine, pulled the handle, watched the wheels spin round, thunk to a stop and then stood in shock as $100 rattled into the chute. I scooped it up, walked away and didn't gamble for the rest of the trip (unless you count speeding through Death Valley at 120mph in a Rent-A-Wreck car with dodgy brakes).
( SteamedCleaner, Fri 8 May 2009, 22:03, Reply)

i once got shot for cheating at poker.
it was in my back garden.we were all drunk.And wearing shorts.And sitting in a paddling pool.And I was shot with a supersoaker.
Makes a great story until you have the incidental details.
(Fuckpig "That's not even a pound a midget.", Fri 8 May 2009, 21:36, Reply)

Ireland & Fridges
Tony Hawkes takes on bet that he wouldn't hitch around Ireland with a fridge. He did. Oh how I laughed. Funniest book ever.
(raggerbun clicks, Fri 8 May 2009, 21:09, Reply)

Like A Moth To The Flame
I love blackjack and I get ripped by it, whether in Vegas or the local casinos. Sometimes it's literally getting ripped, with blood appearing on the cards (new cards can be so sharp, edge-on, that when dealt, they behave like ninja stars and people get hurt.

Strange people too. Everyone trying to relax, and no one can....

Lots of Asians. It's funny how culture carries over into the game, and they assume because you are older you know what you are doing. Once during a winning streak, a pretty Asian girl, about age 23, gazed admiringly at my stack of black $100 chips, and asked in broken English: "How many year?" Well, let's see, that would be about twelve, mostly-losing years. "You winning now because you more experienced," she said. Is that true? I wondered about that.

Of course, age doesn't necessarily have anything to do with it. There was also an extraordinarily exasperated Asian man there of about my age. Every time things went badly, which was often, he would pound the table and make the cards jump. He'd fume and rage and throw things around. Kind of scary.

The only good times happen when the dealer starts losing....

Fleeting conversations - A Vietnamese man flirted with the Vietnamese-American dealer, and asked: "Do you like pho (noodles)?" The sheer randomness of the question startled the dealer and made her giggle. I related how I'd seen a restaurant in Seattle called "What The Pho" and everyone thought that was funny.

A 22-year-old college student told how he had made a living for four months playing blackjack in the San Diego area casinos before plunging so badly he had to call mom and dad for rescue. Making a living that way always seemed like it might be fun (if dangerously unreliable). People told tales of losing streaks (one player spoke of losing $19,000.00 in one night).

I told of losing $3,300.00 once at the Mandalay Bay Casino in Las Vegas. When I came out of the casino, bleary-eyed, I saw a billboard advertising breast implants for $4,000.00, and I thought "Damn! I could have had breast implants instead!" Everyone laughed, but the college student was skeptical: $4,000.00 sounded too cheap for breast implants. This was six years ago, but maybe it was a ridiculous price even then. A loss leader - something to get customers in the door for the pricier body sculpting.

The best I ever did at blackjack was starting with $300.00 at the Palms Casino/Hotel in Vegas. The place is supposed to be among the best nightspots in Vegas, or so they say. The place is supposed to be a lady magnet too, but I found many 30-year-old guys instead. Kind of empty, too, on a Sunday night. Apparently we had a celebrity sighting: someone said "There's Mark Cuban!" (owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team). I stared at Mark: he stared at me. But since I don't follow sports, it meant nothing to me. The blackjack was good, though: I won enough to be $2,130.00 ahead.

Afterwards, feeling euphoric at 1 a.m. Monday, I drove over to the Strip, and ended up at Paris, Las Vegas. Five hectic hours later, after frenzied and aggressive gambling, I had won an obscene $12,527.50, for a total win of about $14,600.00 Amazing! So one CAN reach into the flame and come out a winner (at least, until one returns to the flame, like a moth, and loses it all back, and more).
(Perv With A Dog had his eyes pecked out by scrub jays on, Fri 8 May 2009, 20:41, Reply)

Melbourne Casino
After watching the guy I was travelling with blow $150 in 15 minutes at a roulette table in the big casino there (then going to the ATM for more), I thought better of blowing my meagre travel funds at the tables and generally soaked up the atmosphere. (note, standing in a casino on your own, occasionally scratching your nose will definately attract the attention of the security!!)

But after a while the sounds off money clattering down into the tray I thought "when in Rome..." and cashed in a $20 note and sat down at the Blackjack table.

After a couple of easy wins, I had $40 - so did my James Bond impression and pushed all my chips towards the dealer. After 5 cards, I had 21 (I didn't realise but a big American guy shouted his congratulations) I won about $150!

So I jumped up, thanked the dealer and cashed in my chips.

Paid for a meal in the posh restaurant and a trip up the Rialto towers with quite a nice girl!!

Win!

(never been to a casino since!)
( h3donist tryin' to play me out as if my name is Sega.., Fri 8 May 2009, 20:00, 2 replies)

My American Friend
I went to school with a fantastically patriotic American girl called Allison.

Sitting around watching the 4x100 metres men's relay freestyle swimming at the Sydney Olympics, I unintentionally wound Allison up.

I made the mistake of casually remarking after the first swimmers had nearly completed their legs, that the Australians, who were the only ones good enough to stop the US from clean-sweeping the swimming events, would go on to win the race.

Immediately Allison leapt on my comments, calling me many of the names under the sun, and unfairly accusing me of an anti-American bias and of not knowing anything about swimming.

I'm not the biggest gambler in the world, but I was reasonably confident that the Australians would win, so we bet £10 on it.

Without wanting to recall the race blow-for-blow, the Australians spanked the USA by a country mile, and I duly collected my winnings.

But Allison’s experience taught me a valuable lesson: never let your heart overrule your head when gambling.

Oh, and to make sure that what you’re betting on isn’t in fact a re-run of a race that happened earlier in the day and the person you are making the bet with hasn’t already seen the result and is desperately not trying to giggle like a giddy schoolgirl at the easiest money ever made.
(jimmy spankhands, Fri 8 May 2009, 18:55, Reply)

I went to a casino once with my girlfriend, who is a supermodel, then drove home in my Ferrari

( Gilgamesh gazed in wonder as Frampton came alive, Fri 8 May 2009, 18:27, 4 replies)

Trip to Atlantic City!
Had a little road trip to AC with my bro a few years back. Drove down in a nice little drop top Mustang. Arrived in the Sands (which incidentally no longer exists) at straight away hit up a couple of poker tables. After a little while playing against some colourful characters from all over the states, these two old, black, Mississippi stereotypes sat down and livened things up no end. Great couple of blokes, drinks were qothed all round, and laughs were being had.
After a while we broached the topic of safety in the US and guns. One woman (who was actually just watching her husband playing) agreed that you had to carry a gun these days. As she said it she tapped her bag. I was a little worried by this. My worries were only compounded when everyone agreed that carrying a gun at all times, is the only way to remain safe! So there I was, a 20 something limey sitting around a table in the states with a group gun toting, NRA enthusiasts, all of whom freely admitted to be currently carrying a gun!!

The stereotypes noticed my discomfort at this point and reassured me with a phrase that will probably stay with me till my dying day.

"You gotta be carrying a piece now maannn, people be shooting babies upside they heeeeeads"
That cheered me up so much I decided I’d see the night out until the early hours of the next day. Finally got to bed about 9am I think.
(Mr Bojangles Of London Town, Fri 8 May 2009, 18:14, Reply)

How I met my boyfriend
This isn't a gamble in the strictest sense, but perhaps one of the most stupid chances I've ever taken that luckily turned out great. Apologies for lack of funnies but I promise this is 100% true.

A few years ago I was having a bit of a rough time. Throw usual teenage angst (I was 18) in with a very ill mother, father having a mental breakdown, recovering from anorexia and growing clinical depression... then add a bad case of unrequited love on top of that. You can probably imagine. As a result I started to become pretty withdrawn and spent a lot of time shut up in my room crying and listening to Nick Drake. Not a good sign if you know his fate. Anyway, one day when I was online I came across a site where I had the opportunity to bemoan the object of my affection's lack of interest in me, and came to notice a few reprobates on the site asking stupid, hilarious questions. For the first time in ages I had a proper laugh, and it became a drug for me. It seems pretty sad now how I came to live my life online but certainly at the time, in a life where I had little joy, it became a rock for me. After some months I got to know some of these folks pretty well and we became somewhat infamous (this was a serious site, not like here!)... trolling and suchlike.
A good proportion of these people were also troubled souls and we supported each other, genuinely cared about each other and for the first time in my life I found highly intelligent, funny and open-minded people... the sort of person I liked. The sort of person I wanted to be. Unfortunately I was also very young, and although aware of the dangers of online relationships of any kind, in my state wanted to believe the best in all of them. And it worked out... more or less. There were a few serious weirdos but that story's for another day. As is pretty much inevitable with any social group, the folks on there started to pair up and the idea of meeting up was bandied about. I distanced myself from this talk but was actually shocked when I heard that a fair few of them had met up already. Things started to move a bit too fast for comfort. Some were moving in together, at least 3 people I knew of were having affairs, the rest were meeting up and taking drugs overdoses etc.
By this stage I was more or less back on the tracks, but this experience (you must understand it was very intense and new... pretty mind-blowing) had made me realise what was making me so unhappy and the terrible shortcomings of my life. I began to realise that if I continued to have no ambition and something didn't change pretty soon then I'd end up like some of the older people there, and I wanted to learn from their experiences. So I decided that these new friends of mine were the way to go, however at the time I was living overseas from most of them. Around this time I also decided it was time to cut my ties with this social networking site... it had given me the support I needed but it was time to move on. Relationships were starting to get too complicated and I was becoming too dependent on it.

I'd met a few men on the site and had what you might, in a sense, call relationships, however one had caught my eye in particular. He was different from the others in that he didn't come across and actively take part in the site himself. He was a friend of one of the members who had come on simply because he was curious, and didn't spend much time online. All in all, he seemed a lot more grounded than most of the others. We hit it off pretty much right away and were soon texting. I'd already decided to get my life in order and was starting to look into doing a degree, and one of the universities I was interested in was near to where he lived. This is where I took my huge chance. I applied to do a course there and flew to meet him. Bear in mind I was still a teenager and had never met anyone off the internet before. Luckily all went well and we got on the best. Fast forward a few months and I'm living in a new country, with a new set of friends, studying a subject I never thought I'd do. I started taking anti-depressants and got my weight up to a healthy level. My parents were sorry to see me go but they understood it was better for me, and as a result I was better able to support them and not be an emotional burden.

I started going out properly with this guy and met loads of the people from the site who I'm still good friends with now. Although they might not realise it, they saved me, and helped me discover who I am. Me and my boyfriend have just bought a house and are planning to move in together. I'm lining myself up for a good job. I'm happy, healthy and have great friends. And all thanks to that huge gamble I took.
(I'm not here was here on, Fri 8 May 2009, 17:30, 5 replies)

My mate Dave and the ginger
Dave (whose real name is Chris) arranged a bet with me.

He was so confident that he would win that he didn't even want me to pay or give him anything afterwards because he would be happy with the smug satisfaction that he was right. If I won he was going to give me all of his CDs and a mighty fine collection it was too.

This bet went on for some years, and admittedly I wasn't all that far off losing, had the opportunity arisen (i.e. I was drunk enough) then I probably would have lost several times over, and not really regretted it too much.

The bet? He reckoned that I would sleep with the short, becoming-tubby, ginger, ex-girlfriend of one of our mates.

I didn't

That bastard owes me all his CDs.
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Fri 8 May 2009, 17:25, 2 replies)

Roulette
I went to Las Vegas with my wife, and discovered her at a roulette table that she'd been at for a while.

When I pointed out that it wasn't a great idea to put equal amounts of money on black and red each time, she flew into a rage and said "well at least I haven't lost as much as you, you smug twat".

Never a truer word.
( browser still relating boring anecdotes into a void on, Fri 8 May 2009, 17:12, 4 replies)

JAWS
One time I was attacked by a lifesize cardboard cutout of Jaws. The fucker growled:

"Give me all your fucking stationery!"

Odd... But I handed over the Biro I had in my top pocket and put my hands in the air like the true coward I am. Then the fucker ripped off my kneecap and finned it, leaving me lying in a pool of my own blood.

Its true what they say: Watch out for card sharks - they'll leave you pen-knee less...

*fuck me, sorry about that...
( SpankyHanky, Fri 8 May 2009, 16:55, 6 replies)

Casino Royale.
Last Friday I went on a freinds Stag Do. We went to Sunny Blackpool. I actually live there so it was no big journey for me. However as Blackpool is the Las Vegas of Europe ;) (or so the fucking shite leaflets that the spotty ginger mong kid puts through my door says) I have actually never ever been in a Casino.

So my inner self was shaking with excitement like Micheal J Fox on my Nans wobbly Washing Machine.

In we went, nice carpets, old women done up like 21 year olds (well so they thought) even though they stunk of piss and their tits were on Black 23.

I digress...

There I was poised, at the roulette table, thinking I was James Fucking Bond, and BANG. I did it.

I fucking collapsed as the 5 Sambuca shots I had in the previous pub, coupled with 13 pints hit me. I hit the floor like Ricky Hatton last week, Ko'd, I woke with spew all over me, and 2 mates trying to keep security from twatting the fucking living daylights out of me.

I was soon after ejected into the street.

So there you have it, Im now a full on hard gambler, casino regular* and high flyer.

*Im not anymore as I had my membership torn up.

Not all bad though, as I went home, carried on drinking and won my Brown Wings, as my missus agreed to let me smash her up the Rex Titter.

Win Win
(hoogie Original Cunt Horse Author, Fri 8 May 2009, 16:53, 2 replies)

First day at a new job
Over lunch, the boss boasts that she can eat a whole muffin in one bite. She proceeds to prove this, to much eyerolling from the jaded crowd.

"I bet I could do that." I whisper quietly.

"Go on then. Do it and you get the afternoon off, paid." she challenged.

So I did. With the biggest one in the pack. Much cheering ensued.

The cheering turned to cries of "Shit! Someone give him the Heimlich!" as a realised that there was simply too much muffiny goodness to fit down my throat at once, and that I could neither breath nor swallow nor get a grip on the offending lump because opening my mouth forced it further down my throat.

Eventually enough of it dropped that I could open my mouth, so I did, expelling a half chewed chunk of mush the size of a tennis ball onto the carpet on front of my new colleagues.

Length? About 4 weeks after that debacle.
(a gun that fires other, smaller guns full of jizz, Fri 8 May 2009, 16:52, 5 replies)

While on holiday in the med a couple of years ago
With the wife and kids. Midway through the holiday and and the missus fancied a going out for a few drinks and a bite to eat at the last minute, but couldn't get hold of a babysitter for love nor money. Alas, we took the gamble and left the kids unattended.

And fuck did we lose.

Yours

Gerry McCann



(Sorry)
(TheManWithThePlan cussed your mum on, Fri 8 May 2009, 16:27, Reply)

Gambling - Personal
Here's a story that, following the homo mathematicus statisticus bollocks below might make some of you smile, others of you grimace and - well, whatever.

Let it be a given that the line between being a smartarse and being a mental is fuzzy at the best of times and that the line can sometimes can be crossed. Agreed? OK. In that case, I gamble every day with my own well-being (and you thought the last one was melodramatic? Ha!).

My major malfunction is that I'm a mental.

I keep a lock-box at home that contains my "rolling-a-seven" plan and instruments/devices necessary (although, to be honest, they plan is committed to memory and I don't need much of anything in the box apart from my other passport to put it to use). It's also got the last letter and my will in it (which I suspect would be challenged but, hey, n'est la vie pas (a wee black joke there for our Francophones)).

My mentalness is kept in check with a fist full of SNRIs every day - 300mg currently, that I know will in time either box my liver (absorption) or cause me to have either a TIA or a stroke (side effects = artifically increased BP).

These SNRIs are great and I've spoken here of them before but it's important to be able to talk this through. If I need to be able to get some of the higher-quality ideas out of my head (or rather, not have the voices in my head silenced) then I need to stop taking them, even for 24 hours. I've tried titrating and it doesn't work - I've got to drop them completely.

That particular 24 hours is a real rollercoaster. I'll start by thinking "what am I doing?", not sleep, and work like an eejit for that 24 hours. Millie (my dog) will not get much attention other than being fed and walked briefly. I'll get tons done and come up with some cracking ideas - including some absolute stormers, if I say so myself - but the effect will be tempered by knowing that when I'm coming up with these ideas, the wee voice generated in my head is reminding me of what a total and complete waste of oxygen and base-pairs (RNA) I am, and suggesting that I go get the lock-box.

I can shut him/her up (the voice changes, regularly) by working but the stereotype mental that people sometimes think of? Sitting in a room in his pants, talking to himself or to an invisible person, getting his thoughts out and unshaven, unwashed, unkempt? Yep, c'est moi.

Thus far, the furthest I've got in my seven-rolling plan is on a plane from the connecting airport I've got to fly through (not telling you which one it is) to one of the waypoints, at which point I got off the plane and took the next one back, arriving home about 18 hours later.

So - there's my gamble. I take it every few weeks or so.
(Eds Meds Mathskillz=1,Socialskillz=0, Fri 8 May 2009, 16:13, 7 replies)