That’s the lead-in to a story the gets more and more bazaar by the sentence.
The young man had to be rushed to the Lister Hospital in Stevenage, Hertfordshire. The wound was disinfected to cleanse it before he was given a bed in an observation ward.
“This is something we would advise men never to attempt,” a medic said, “The results can be quite horrific and long-lasting and have quite an affect on a man’s sexual performance.
Really? You really felt it necessary to make a point that you don’t advise this? I thought chopping away at your penis with a pair of nail clippers was the recommended way to remove a pesky foreskin. Thanks for clearing that up for me.
“Using a pair of nail clippers must have caused excruciating pain, even if he had had a few drinks beforehand.”
Really? I was wondering if that would hurt. Then I thought, “Well it probably wouldn’t hurt after a few beers,” but again you’ve set me straight on that one too.
Personally, I think this is all part of the main stream medical community conspiracy to keep us from doing minor surgeries ourselves and saving a little cashola. In fact, I’m going to prove it. Hold on while I get my nail clippers. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!
Okay, maybe he was telling the truth about the excruciating pain part. Wait, should there be this much blood? I’m not feeling so gooooooooooooooooo
When I was up in Amsterdam my Nokia N95 suddenly quit working. I bought it awhile back in Bangkok at MBK relatively cheap. At the time I was really wavering back and forth whether to get the N95 or plunk down the cash and get an iPhone. I was happy at the time because most of the vendors were selling hacked iPhones and since I wasn’t going to be in Thailand the next time Apple did a firmware upgrade I couldn’t just pop into MBK and have them slap the newest Apple defeating upgrade on me.
Now, for those of you not in the iPhone fan crowd you can get an iPhone hacked to work on any network. In the US the iPhone can only be used on AT&T’s network and nearly every other country they’ve introduced the iPhone it is tied to a single carrier so if you want to switch to another mobile service provider your phone is basically becomes and MP3 player with some cool toys.
You can also do something called Jailbreaking which hacking the phone so that you can install applications on the phone that haven’t been approved by Apple and placed in their iTunes store.
Personally, I don’t care about Jailbreaking the phone but I did need one that was unlocked so when I bought the N95 it seemed like a good decision not to buy a hacked iPhone and worry that the next time I did a software upgrade I would be sitting there with a piece of junk that didn’t work.
Nowadays you can pick up Hong Kong or Italian iPhones at MBK. In both Hong Kong and Italy it’s illegal for them to lock the phone to a network like that so Apple is forced to sell them completely unlocked and ready to use on any mobile network. So I went ahead and shelled out more than a modest sum for a completely legit iPhone imported from Italy.
Anyway, that’s a lot of yapping just to tell you that I wanted to post some pics that I’ve taken with the iPhone that I hope folks might enjoy or even find funny.
These first two I took of today’s two English-language newspapers. Yes, Michael Jackson death mania has hit Thailand. Exports down 25%, millions of jobs lost, tourism numbers have fallen through the floor, and this is what makes the front page. :-)
These next photos were taken outside a famous Bangkok restaurant called Cabbages and Condoms. It’s run by the Population and Community Development Association and funds raised by the restaurant go to providing safe-sex education in Thailand. The Thai food is really very good and when your bill arrives instead of mints there’s a handful of condoms.
Last night I went out with a bunch of friends to a club called 808 on Royal City Avenue (RCA). The one and only Grandmaster Flash was the featured DJ. For those of you too young to remember Grandmaster Flash he was one of the original pioneers of hip-hop and DJ’ing way back in the day. He is also the first hip-hop artist to ever be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
RCA is a little street outside of the main tourist areas filled with nightclubs and discos that’s a favorite amongst the young and beautiful Thai crowd. Clubs are usually overflowing with university students and 20-something Thais. That makes it even more amusing that this old-school hip-hop legend was playing there as I’m sure half the people didn’t even know some of the songs he was playing.
We arrived somewhat early not sure if the event was going to sell out. At 9:30pm we were the first people there and the staff wasn’t quite ready for us. When we asked how much the cover charge was they showed us a flyer saying it was 750 baht or you could purchase a bottle of whiskey and you got 2 free admissions. If I remember correctly it was 3500 baht for one bottle or 4000 baht for two bottles. Obviously the 2 bottle option and 4 free admissions was a bargain.
We told them that we would take the 2 bottles and they said that that was the wrong price despite that it was clearly written on the flyer. We asked what the correct price was but nobody knew.
While my friend haggled with them at the door I received a phone call from my friend Offy who was wandering around RCA looking for us so I stepped out into the street to flag her down.
When we caught back up with our friend they had given him another price and after he accepted it they told him once again that that price was wrong and had to go get management to figure out what the real price should be. In the end I think we ended up paying the 4000 baht for 2 bottles which had been originally advertised.
Normally back home tempers would be flaring at this point. Such a level of incompetence would have more than a few people seething. I mean, this is your business! How can you not know what the price of admission or the cost of drinks are?
But this is Thailand so all you can do is laugh and chalk it up as a funny story to tell people. Aggression, anger, and rude behavior are a recipe for trouble in Thailand as the Brit in this video found out the hard way.
Mind you, violence against farangs (foreigners) is very rare in Thailand. When it does happen it’s usually in situations like these where some twat looses it and he crosses the line. Thais are normally very confrontation-averse so it takes a bit of pushing but once the line is crossed they show absolutely no mercy.
Anyway, apart from that minor annoyance at the door the rest of the evening was absolutely fantastic. Great music, great friends, and a great time.
Several weeks ago an old friend from high school pinged me on Facebook and told me that one of our mutual friends, John James, was in the hospital receiving chemo-therapy.
During junior high, high school and for a while afterward John and I were like brothers. We lived right across the [...]
Not poker related but I couldn’t stop laughing when I saw this. Especially the part where he threatens to get get his lawyer involved to force a website to put back content that he was stealing.
It’s been awhile since my last post here so now that I’m a little more settled in I thought I would share a little about what I’ve been doing while I’ve been so very quiet.
The big news is that I decided to relocate to Thailand. That’s why it’s been difficult to post [...]
I’m actually writing this early AM on Monday but I still have that Sunday spirit and it’s still Sunday somewhere in the world so I guess it still counts.
Later this week I’ll be up at the Amsterdam Affiliate Conference. A few faithful readers have pinged me to let me know they intend on being there [...]
Based on the number of emails I’ve received over the last few days it looks like word is slowly leaking out that I’m no longer with Betsson.
The first question everybody asks is “So, what happened?” Well, it’s a bit of a long story that involves a crazy Maltese taxi driver, horse tranquilizers, a 150ml [...]
There’s probably no single topic that divides the online poker industry more than rakeback [what is rakeback?]. Seriously, in many companies rakeback is a dirty word. At one company I know it’s jokingly referred to as “The Unmentionable” by the poker staff because to even say the word rakeback generates a negative Pavlovian response within [...]
Proof Online Poker is Rigged One can hardly read any poker forum without running across individuals claiming that this or that site is rigged. Usually they are humiliated with the forum .experts. rudely telling them that the reason they.re losing is because they aren.t good poker players. I.m sad to say that I used to be one of those .experts.. I was one of the doubters until I actually caught one site cheating.
Why Online Poker Is Not Rigged In this post I will attempt to address every argument I.ve ever heard regarding online poker being rigged. Mind you, I do work for a company that develops online poker software but my motivation is not to convince people to trust *my* employer.s software, rather it is to have a central place where people can point misinformed message board and blog posters who think somebody is pulling something on them.
Motivations For Rigging Online Poker I.m not sure whether it.s funny or sad that even after my post on why online poker is not rigged, I still get people emailing me trying to convince me otherwise. The funny/sad part is that despite the fact that I.ve all but called people who make that claim without hand histories or other empirical evidence idiots I continue to receive 1 . 5 emails a week telling me some bad beat story and QED, online poker is rigged. So with that in mind, I.m going to expound a bit on some new points as well as clarify previously made points.
PokerBot Pro - Another Online Poker Scam Pauly emailed me this link the other day and I just can.t help calling the guy on his bullshit. He's certainly not the first person to make such absurd claims but he happened to be the one I decided to pick on.
Online Poker Tells Many players will tell you that online poker tells either don.t exist or are difficult to judge. That's a load. All the online pros know the tells but it's some sort of unspoken rule never to let others in on it. Well, that ends right now! I will share with my loyal readers 5 of the top online poker tells that they (and we know who *they* is, don.t we?) don.t want you to know about.
The Wisdom of Bonus Whoring One of the common topics you.ll see mentioned in the poker blogosphere is bonus whoring. Of course, bonus whoring is the act of playing on a particular site in order to take advantage of a reload or some other type of promotional bonus. Many people chase bonuses from site to site and even include bonuses in their monthly win/lose figures. The more I've thought about it though, the more I.m beginning to question the wisdom of bonus whoring.
Seeing The World Through The Eyes of a Fish Have you ever been left scratching your head trying to figure out why your opponent played the hand the way he did? I certainly did so I found a fish and hooked him up to the USB port on my computer and did the same to myself. The results of this experiment are below:
The Ultimate Secret to Winning Poker I'm going to let everyone in on the biggest secret in poker; there is no secret! You can quit looking for that special book, video, website, etc. that.s going to turn your game around and make you into the next Phil Hellmuth Ivey.
Hi, my name is Bill Rini and this is my poker blog. I've been blogging about poker and the poker industry since around 2003-ish. Like most people I started out playing poker as entertainment in home games whenever we wanted to sit around and smoke cigars, drink beer, and eat pizza, and needed a good excuse. I started playing online shortly after the first online card rooms opened and it wasn't long before I was playing 20, 30, or even 40 hours a week or more. One day I received a phone call about a program manager position at Tiltware which was the company that consulted to Full Tilt Poker on software development and marketing. After Tiltware I spent about 2.5 years working at Party Poker where I was the poker room manager.