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SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION WARNING

I know how hard it can be to wait by your computer for yet another literary eruption from this here corner of the blogosphere. Heaven forbid you should miss the story of little timmy and his pet manatee lost in the wilds of mid-twentieth century michigan. 

Fear not! You can now get an email notice when a fresh and refreshing post appears on this - your source for all things not so significant. No need to endlessly send your browser seeking for updates on Keeping Your Head in (All) the Game(s). Now the internet will call you!

Over there on the right is a brand new widget, just enter your email eddress and the ever and always on-duty silicon gremlins of blogger will let you know when I post new and exciting bon mots of great import or otherwise.

See! There it is!!  ------------------------------------------>

Sign up now!!!

Tomorrow we return you to our regular non-commercial programming.

Why I Blog: For My New Friends

I write this blog because I want my internal ponderings of so many years to be out in the world not just swirling around in my head. I hope at times I assist others on their journey, at times perhaps make you smile and either sense relief from my rantings or motivate you to rant back at me. The pictures I include are the real pleasure of my blogging; I enjoy both finding them and sharing with you.

Recently there has been a big jump in the number of internet friends who visit this blog for the first time. Partly this comes from several online chat rooms I have joined for "professional networking" purposes. I also have begun using the net for some other leisure activities and that means many of my new friends see the facebook promos I put up whenever a blog post goes live. 

Not all of these new friends know that I am a fairly active blogger, so I thought it might be a good idea to introduce this blog to new acquaintances and perhaps to clarify to olde friends exactly why it is that I write this blog.

I hope you enjoy what leaks out from my head, my heart and my soul into this blog, if not; please block my facebook announcements, I know I am not everyone's flavor of the month.

Here is some of what you might want to know about me before investing your time reading this blog:

-I am a writer and I often use the blog to test out ideas for articles, stories, even books;

-I have a wide range of interests; some might even say perhaps a bit too wide;

-I might be considered politically liberal but I often seem too annoy my lefty friends with what I write here; I have lots of olde and new readers from all walks of life spread around the world;

-I do have an advanced degree in psychology and I do sometimes write with big words; on the other hand I like to write on a wide range of topics, in particular my Saturday posts tend to annoy my old academic friends;

-when something interests me, I will often chase it around the internet for several hours or days and report back in a blog post;

-while my political posts are heavily United States oriented, the rest of my material is not, at least I hope it isn't;

-I often tell stories about things that happened to me yesterday or thirty years ago; these stories usually have a point to them, but I often forget to mention what it is;

-There have been over 500 posts since I began in 2007. Should you want to know more, you can find a blogger's list (100 things about me) here.


If you do drop by, I invite you to use the comments section on anything that you like, hate, don't understand, really like or completely detest. I enjoy the feedback or blowback as the case may be.

Most of all - thanks for reading. Writing is such a solitary act, it really helps to know someone is listening.

A Blog is Not a Life

Guilty! I offer no excuse, I have heard myself say it in various forms.

"I mentioned this in my blog."

"I have a post about that in my blog queue."

"I told this story awhile back on my blog."

I do sincerely apologize for any truncated or abandoned conversations that have sprung from my egomaniacal references to one tiny cul de sac on this infrequently traveled cyber street. Blogging like nearly every other endeavor in life has some positives and some of those other things. One of those negative qualities is the author's belief that everyone they know in the real world reads their blog and retains the essential and life altering insights the blogger believes were conveyed therein.

We really are all brilliant in our own minds. Sometimes that attitude leaks out through the keyboard.

Sorry, it will probably happen again.

--

cartoon from americanhell.com

Five New Ways to View Blogger Blogs

You may not know and more than likely don't care that Blogger (aka Blogspot) the host for this and millions of other blogs is owned by Google. Until very recently it has made absolutely no difference, the corporate campus of Google has basically ignored the blogosphere. But things have changed. The creative minds down south in sillycon valley have turned the flaming eye of attention on Blogger.

One of the first innovations involves five different "dynamic views" that allow you to see the content of my blog in several rather unique visual configurations. Because I use a large number of images, a couple of the new views actually work pretty well for this blog.

You get there by going up to the browser window where you now see: http://pokershrink.blogspot.com and adding /view. Or just click here. This takes you to the first view called Sidebar, for me the least interesting of the new front pages. You'll find a blue-green pulldown menu on the top right that will whisk you to Mosaic, Flipcard and Snapshot - the more interesting content displays with a variety of 'mouse over' options. 

Interesting new features for Blogger and hopefully a sign that Google is turning its mass of talent to the blogging software; giving me more toys with which to entertain and periodically enlighten you.

500th Post

If I continue at my current blog rate, I will produce another hundred posts about every six months. So the 600th, 700th and 800th posts are really not that big of a deal. For that matter neither is today's offering, which just happens to be number five hundred. I decided to make this is a working celebration. A couple of weeks back I thought I would be interesting to notice what SEO tags (search engine optimization) I had used over the years. That, of course, led me to completely revamp my SEO labeling system. I have removed any stray tags that got used only once or twice and have consolidated several of the others.


So here today on the moment of my 500th blog post, I offer my current list of SEO tags, which do say a lot about what I have and haven't been writing about for these last 4+ years.


Right there at the top, of course, is poker with 75 tags and probably a few more if I had been really diligent and thorough in the early years. These days there are only one or two poker posts each year but in '07 I started this blog as a supplement to my poker media gigs. It makes sense then that poker shrink comes in second with 51 tags. I wrote a lot of articles on commercial poker websites using the Poker Shrink pseudonym.


Next comes the nexus of tags that indicate what I have been blogging about the last several years: politics [41], commentary [44], life [39], psychology [26], books [40] and writing [35]. I would imagine these will crawl ever higher on the list.


Back in '09 there were a lot of posts from my fourteen months on the road - my undomiciled period: travels [34] ranked high. I also like to acknowledge holidays [27] of all sorts, including birthdays, halloween, anniversaries and solstices of all kinds.


Earlier, while writing the poker book - Checking Raising the Devil [12] with Mike Matusow [30] and my co-author Amy Calistri [16], I also wrote quite a bit about Las Vegas [31] and the World Series of Poker [24].


Recently a range of life ponderings [27] have asserted themselves as I look out of the window at my Berkeley view [21]; I never get far from various forms of philosophy [17] both near and not so. And I often regale you with my life-long fondness for cats [18]. More recently, with prompting from a friend who also blogs, I have begun to tell more of my stories [27] - two academics walk into a fetish bar . . .


Wonder what will the next 500 bring?

December-January Link Dump

Last month while I took a break from blogging, I did not take a break from surfing. As usual I came across many websites I thought worth recommending. Here is a somewhat expanded link dump of cyber tidbits and morsels. I think nearly anyone who reads this blog on a regular basis will find something of interest here.

The first link refers to the picture above. Islamophobia Today is a great source for articles and incidents to throw at any closet bigots you might know. I understand all of your friends, like all of mine, are free of bigotry. But there is always a scapegoat of the moment that many consider deserving of what they would never admit to be prejudice or bigotry. These days it is Islam that fills the bottom rung in our collective psyche.

One of my favorite links from the past (three years ago) is the Ben Cohen BB video about nuclear arms using BBs to illustrate, yes this is Ben of Ben & Jerry's. Recently I found this one on the Obama $100 million budget cuts, this one uses pennies to provide the scope of the U.S. budget.

One final site with a political tinge. Not My Priorities. Not only do you get to express our views on how your tax dollars should be spent but they have free postcards to send to your representatives that give you the opportunity to vent a bit. I sent mine!

On a completely different plain I found Wisdom Bits - Nubbins of Wisdom from Everlasting Song Mavens.  A bit of quotable fun.

I remain amazed that JG Wentworth spends millions of dollars on television advertising to people who have structure legal settlements. I am amazed that it is so profitable for them meaning there are tens of thousands of lawsuit winners out there to be advertised to. Now I find that if you are in a really long divorce battle and your are running low on money to live and to continue to sue the bastard who left you for his 22 yr. old secretay, there is a company that will invest in your divorce settlement. Balance Point Divorce Funding will give you a lump sum to live on and to be able to continue the divorce proceedings. Their cut? Well they get a piece of the final divorce gouging.

How about a World Clock, not just of time or time zones but of world population, deaths worldwide, U.S. budget deficit, world wide energy, environmental numbers, food and more.

I point out this next website without looking in a mirror or trying to touch my toes. Fat is the new thin when it comes to male sexual performance or size does matter kind of. No not that size!

You know I seldom let a month go by without some photos from the Hubble Space Telescope. This is what NASA calls the Advent Calendar 2010. Twenty-five shots from Hubble, some old some new. The pictures are beautiful, the words will provide the wonder.

Final, two posts from friends of mine who also engage in this frustrating, egotistical adventure we call blogging. The I Don't Give a Crap Tax from Michelle Lewis and techno-bling and the demise of a Qigong Master by Mira. Interesting reading, admirable writing.

Welcome to the new year, remember the days really are getting longer but the nights are more inviting.

Message in a Bloggle

I have been giving feedback to a friend about a new blog she is participating in. There are several contributors and right now while they are already adding content, they are also wrangling over the look and feel of the website as well as the explanatory text for potential visitors. My continuing comment to them has been: "Who is your audience?" after you answer that question then I ask: "Do you think you have reached them?"

Insider comments and ambiguous text at the beginning invariably means you lose some readers at the outset, which is fine if you really want only the insiders who "get it." The problem is too many cliches and everyone begins to feel like they are reading text without the secret decoder ring. Just because you know it and even consider it common knowledge doesn't make it so. 

Always, always, always be considerate of your audience otherwise you are writing to yourself and as I have told my agent many times: "I don't need to write the stories down for myself, I have already experienced them many times over. I will only take the energy to put them on paper if someone else might benefit from them."

So today a wee bit of un-decoded message from me today, all of it contained in the artwork at the top. Just enjoy the picture, all but one of you. I will say that I really miss the fall season, I am going to attempt to plan my wanderings better so that I may be in the midwest or northeast for as many falls as possible in the future. The colors, smells and temperament of the season just resonates with my soul. I really enjoy the Bay Area all year round but the fall simply lacks in birch, maple and oak.

--

art: Robin Rose

Stubborn Slime Stains

For some time I have been considering writing a political blog. Either starting another completely new blog with fair warning that it will be completely political or dedicating one day a week here to a political posting. My reasoning goes something like this:

Nearly anything I hear out of the mouth of a politician, a lobbyist, a cabinet member and most certainly a political personage in the media is a lie. Politics lives on lies. Some are willing to call it spin or even "politics as usual." I prefer the slightly more pure analysis when I call it "lies, damned lies and statistics."

One problem I have with this idea is that I will probably need to reconnect myself to the contemporary political conversation. For the past 20 years I have been able to remain on the periphery only catching what drifts by on the wind. One simply has to detect the rancid smell of an approaching political utterance and listen for just a moment to detect the falsification. However, if I dedicated any portion of my writing time to politics I am going to need to reengage with the swill. I really don't like the feeling of needing to sterilize my keyboard after reading more than a single political blog.

The good news is that I have as much trouble with Michael Moore as I do with Glenn Beck. No one actually uses the facts to make their point. I remember so clearly hearing an attack ad on George W. and thinking -- Why would they make up something about him, he says so many incredibly stupid things, why not just play the tape?

In the recent race for governor here in California, the democrats made a big deal of a major newspaper saying of Meg Whitman (the defeated GOP candidate) that she had "a loose relationship with the truth." Don't they get it? The voters all believe that to be the very definition of a politician. Just about the only position worse than actually being a politician is being a voter who actually believes in either of the two parties cancerously alive in Amerika today.

You know I really needed to get this down on cyber-paper, if only to remind myself what I really think about the state of the political debate today. Fear not fair readers I have once again talked myself out of reentering the world politics, they just don't make enough soap to wash off those stubborn slime stains.

Sky Watching: the Leonid meteor shower peaks tonight.

Another little Milestone

This is the 160th post of this year on my little blog here, that number equals my output of last year, which was the most prior to today, err tomorrow, I mean the next one, probably Monday. Now I do admit to being a much more prolific poster when I wrote and edited PokerBlog.com. I produced poker content there at a rate of twenty posts a month; but as they say that was then this is not.

Even though I use this here blog as a daily writing exercise to keep me sharp for larger, longer projects; I did sorta have a goal for this year, which was 182.5 posts, you know every other day. It now appears I will exceed that number should I continue at my current pace. I hadn't really thought much about these numbers until I went to one of my good friend's blog the other day and found a post that simply said: Away.

How simple, how clear, how appropriate, just away.

I too wish to be away.

So I think I am going to take a hiatus from blogging . . . but not just yet. I'm thinking the end of the year. I am even considering a complete timeout from cyber-space including email, skype, facebook, twitter and lovely ladies over sixty dot com. I'm thinking of spending a couple of weeks with a short stack of books, just reading with a cat curled by my side. Yes going off grid.

But not yet, I have a mini list of items I have ignored while gazing at the western skies the last couple of weeks; those shall be coming to you soon.

Friends and Fellow Travelers

A friend, an olde friend sent me this image and said that it reminded him of me. Somewhere in storage or in another friend's home there is a white Balinese mask very similar to that image. We were in the workshop/gallery of a gifted mask-maker in Ubud, Bali. Mask were being tried on, laughter was awash but respect was being shown to a true craftsman. I put on the white mask in a back hallway and leaned out into the main room just my head emmasked. For a moment there was complete silence and then everyone came towards me, I had evidently found my one true mask. I need to get it out again, wonder where it rests?

But today's post is not about me or images of me. Today's post is about friends and how I speak of friends in this blog. Long time readers know that I tend to begin a tale with -- "a friend told me the other day" or I write about friends as examples of all things good and not so. Friends who make me happy and those that make me sad or baffle me are blog fodder. There are even a couple of very close friends I never write about either because they are just too private and I don't want to intrude or I have ever so lightly referenced them in the past and received less than warm returns via critique.

Recently a post got three responses that basically said -- "Did you mean me?"

So new rule. In the future when I use the term friend I will send said friend an email disclosing their appearance, no matter how veiled, in this here blog. No email, it ain't you.

Now I must go, there are some towering grey clouds hanging low over San Francisco Bay. The sun has been transformed into a viewable disk as it sinks into the greyness. I am going to sit and watch as light and dark struggle. Which I wonder shall prevail?

Four Hundred Posts

One final significant number item in this string of number filled posts -- this is the 400th blog post since I launched Keeping Your Head in the Game back in 2007. Not surprisingly most of the early posts were about poker but since I altered the name to Keeping Your Head in (All) the Game(s) the poker content is down (and nearly out).

I went back and read a lot of those early non-poker posts. Clearly I was searching for my one true blogger voice. I was reminded of how Amy and I searched for several months for Mike Matusow's voice before we found it for his autobiography Check Raising the Devil.

By now I am a certifiable blog addict. I blog because the discipline spills over into my larger writing projects. I blog because for me it is easier to self disclose in print. Friends have noted that I am a great talker but not particularly self-revealing. I blog about what tweaks me, twists me, turns me and teases me. And I enjoy locating the pictures I adorn my blog with.

Four hundred posts took a bit more then 3 1/2 years, but my pace has increased each and every annum. We should be to 500 in time for my birthday early next year. Finally -- thanks for reading, it is always encouraging to know my words may reach your ears, hearts and other body parts.

Not My Father's Blog

At a backyard barbeque I was introduced to a nervous lady this way.

"Here, if anyone can cure your blogger's block, this is the guy."

She was the typical failed blogger. One post six months ago announcing her intention to fill her generic blog with wit, humor and deep insight into the condition of humankind. One borderline interesting, if rambling post the next day. A follow-up post a week later confessing to be too busy to blog. An additional post in each of the next two months further lamenting her lack of time and suggesting that the local city council may be a nest of communists or perhaps closet anarchists -- details to follow. Eventually she delivered the stereotypical blog apology to her massive audience of one. She is shrouded in guilt for not writing and has exactly nothing to write about, save not writing.

I put on my best shrink demeanor and gave her my absolute top of the line advice:

"Don't write, don't blog, don't even open the site. Don't even think about blogging, not for one single moment."

The point is that blogging should not be about pressure. Blog writing is the furthest activity from a 'to do' list that humanoids have ever invented. If you have something to write, I told her, it will arrive fully formed and it will simply flow thru the keyboard and disgorge your wisdom to the multiverse.

She looked at me like I had made some graphic observation about her alimentary canal. Apparently she is one of those people who believe since everyone knows how to write, then it follows that everyone is a writer. I restrained an avuncular "Bite Me!" and moved on to the next gaggle of cocktail drinkers as the first round of braised cow rose from the grill.

Another guest had overheard the blog conversation and told me that not only was the reluctant blogger uptight about just about everything on the planet but her 82 yr. old father was an avid bird watcher and faithfully maintains a birders blog, which he updates several times a week. Aha! Paternal blog envy, got it.

As I drifted past the potato salad and ambrosia I wonder what my father's blog might have looked like. Reminiscences certainly would have brought up the Great Depression and later his service as a junior naval officer in the pacific during WWII. Nearly 30 years in the Dexter Pharmacy would have made for some interesting personality profiles, I know the pharmacy is still the set & setting in some of my dreams.

Politics! Now that would have been fun. We could have written dueling blogs in the late 60s and early 70s. We never saw eye to eye on anything political, but fleshing out our differences in writing would have been an interesting experience.

Late in the party the aforementioned birding father arrived home, until that time I was unaware the nervous non-blogger was also our hostess. Bird dad and I were introduced and we exchanged some thoughts on blogging, widgets and other blogger ephemera. We exchanged URLs and then he said:

"If you mention me in your blog......"

I completed his thought . . . "don't link you up."

"Exactly" he smiled.

Some bloggers like an audience. Others write for a small select group of followers, in Jack's case his birding group. Me?  I like an audience. Agree with me or disagree loudly please, but Read Me! Read Me!

p.s. for the poker boyz -- the plant's name was Audrey II not Seymour.

Link, Blog, Life Dump

Back in Berkeley and sorting thru the debris pile of notes from ten days in Vegas. Not every note becomes blog-worthy and others just are random ponderings on the nature of reality or something like it.

We ran into several living street statues on the Las Vegas Strip. You know those struggling actors/waiters who get into some kind of costume and then stand still. Always a bit puzzling for me but seen as evil by one of my traveling companions. He had the reaction that many of us have to clowns the first time we actually get the dark nature of those big footed pervs. What I liked the most about this conversation was his immediate off-the-cuff comment when several of us pointed out that we considered mimes much worse. "Street statues are the Bastard Stepchildren of Mimes." What a great phrase.

---

Whether Weather. We got lucky last week in Vegas, only one day was over ninety degrees. Global Cooling don't you know. I drove through several hours of 90+ on the way back Saturday but it was a pleasant 52 degrees when I arrived in the East Bay early in the evening. Today is a glorious foggy, rainy and sunless day, which is weather I truly enjoy. But tis late in the season for wetness here in Northern California, the summer dry season is usually upon us by now. What does all this mean? 

Well for one thing the reservoirs are filling up. Several of the water basins, including the monster Lake Shasta are above historical average for this date and we have yet to experience the bulk of the Sierra snowpack melt. Not that the lingering drought is over but this has been a good wet winter for California and at least for today -- it continues.

--

Free book download. The University of Chicago Press is offering a free download every month. These are academic books but they really are free. This has been going on for about a year and the titles are usually interesting and truly diverse. This month: Cartographies of Danger: Mapping Hazards in America. You get the whole book and, of course, a pitch to download other offerings at quite reasonable prices. 

--

And finally today, there appears to be a hashish crisis in Egypt. It is unclear at present whether a government crackdown (perhaps not the best word choice) is responsible or just another product supply issue associated with the worldwide economic crisis. Here in California there is a similar problem with a crash in marijuana prices brought on my over supply from the Emerald Triangle and the medical marijuana initiatives. I got the marijuana story from NPR, which actually took a business perspective on the story and nearly decried the loss to the growers from this plummet in commodities pricing.

I have a question for you . . .

Today I am asking for some audience participation from my esteemed, eclectic and elegant readership. Please consider my request and take twelve seconds or twelve months to respond. For the bashful lurkers, instructions on how to publicly or privately offer your thoughts are given below.

In some recent readings, I came across a provocative question, which I have modified slightly for my purpose. Here it is:

"Indicate some of the fundamental beliefs, concepts, philosophy of life or articles of faith which help carry you along, tide you over rough spots or guide you in the every day conduct of your life."


I should like to pose that considerable inquiry to our little corner of the blogosphere. I certainly will respond, perhaps several times to the parameters of that question. I would ask that you do also. You are welcome to take the words and meaning of those italicized phrases in any manner you like. Send a snippet, offer a thesis, expound or quip. Just please don't be silent.

For the rather sizable number of my readers who would rather remain anonymous, there are several ways to respond without public linkage to your reality. First and the easiest, just click the word "comments" below the last line of this post and open your thoughts with "do not ID me." I moderate all comments to this blog before they are posted and I will detach your name from your comment on request. I may use your thoughts but I will shield your identity.

You can also choose the "anonymous" signature on a comment, that works as well, but in those cases even I will not know who sent the comment. Your choice: protected identity or true anonymity. I may save some of the comments for later posts, so if yours doesn't show up immediately, it will be because I am pondering your submission and will seek to respond or spin off some thoughts you have sparked.

Thank you in advance and may I ask again:

"Indicate some of the fundamental beliefs, concepts, philosophy of life or articles of faith which help carry you along, tide you over rough spots or guide you in the every day conduct of your life."
---
art credit: Chow Martin

Names Have Been Changed

A loyal reader noted recently that I often tell stories about "my olde friend" or I begin a tale with "a friend of mine was going to the park the other day when.....".

My curious friend noted that I seemed to make most of my "friends" anonymous on my blog and she wondered if there was a reason for that. First, guilty as charged. I guess I should have used the O.J. mugshot here.

I do protect my sources and my friends by making most of my stories generic. I don't want to embarrass anyone in my little blog and quite frankly not everyone wants to be as 'out' as I make myself in my posts. In fact, this blog is a bit of an "outing experiment" for me. I have been protective of myself for most of my life. I don't tell stories about me and I haven't been personally in depth with most of my acquaintances. So for the past three years I have been slowly opening up on these pages.

When we wrote the Matusow book, we struggled with which names to keep and which to change. The obvious "I did some meth with _______" were easy changes, but the girlfriends and strippers were not always so obvious. At some point we got confused and didn't know if Kim was Kim or a pseudonym we had made up. It took us the better part of a three day weekend to get all the names straightened out and the guilty protected.

In my current semi-autobiographical, demi-fictional novel/tell-all, I am using the real names of friends, enemies and lovers in the drafts. When I get the completed work ready for a publisher I am going to give everyone the opportunity to vote. You will get to say "me" or "not me" and then I will change the names of all the cowards. Until then, if I disappear, someone had better delete the manuscript. You can find it on this laptop in the "RtM" folder.

As for the blog, I will continue to tell my "friend" stories, but I think I will start numbering them. Something like: "My olde friend #32 was having a dustup with his 24 year old girlfriend when....." Those of you who are regular readers will get the inside joke. Once I am a ridiculously famous author, the late comers will have to read back all the way to March of '10 to get the insider insight.

Until then: "An olde friend (#16) walked into a bar. He spots my other olde friend (#23) slouched in a chair by the juke box. Friend #23 looks at friend #16 and says: 'Did you have to bring the gerbil?'"

Blog Year in Review

Yes, it's that waning moment of the year again. Time to reflect back on what we have and have not accomplished. Also time for my first annual look back at my best posts of the year on this here blog. I haven't done this before because in previous years I had managed only a measly forty or fifty posts. But this will be the one hundred and sixtieth post in 2009, so I am mentally masturbating today looking a representative selection of my blogging over the last twelve months. I would point out to my poker readers that even with the twenty Matusow-Hellmuth-Negreanu articles at the World Series this summer, only 45 of the 160 total posts for the year were poker related and only one made it into this top ten list.

Let's start with that single pokerish post. My Exit Interview from the World of Poker (9/17). It took about a month to detach myself, leave my favorite poker forums and cancel all the Yahoo and Google alerts, but I am no longer powerless over pocket jacks. Despite working on the screenplay from the book, I am on to things with more than 52 objects of attention.

That being said, I do have to highlight at least one post about Check Raising the Devil. If you missed it, here is the original first chapter (5/3) that Amy and I wrote but which never made it past the editor. All of that work seems so long ago, but I have a royalty check in my wallet, so . . .

In the wider world beyond poker there was some noize about health care this year. I took a few passing swipes, as would any cynical, errr critical commentator but I also did one math based piece on the whole health care issue (8/2). In rereading, it would seem, as usual, that the majority of my rational points have no place in the political debate.

I wrote a lot more this year about music, particularly about lyrics and their origins. If you scroll down to the bottom of this post, you can click on the link for a musical, lyrical interlude (9/23).

Livelihood, careers, income and jobs were on and off my mind all year apparently for most of the twelve months. This post Work, Labor, Job, Calling comes from early in my fiscal pondering (2/4).

Old Friends were also on my mind often this year. The trip I am still on created the opportunity for me to visit with many of them. This post related one story (3/24) of a couple of old friends and although they are not cast in the best of light here, life is life. I realized when I was rereading this post that I missed a song appropriate to my many visits this year. If you care to listen in, here is Old Friends.

Along with health care, collective environmental angst kept up the greening of amerika. I wrote a post on the comparative cost of energy and the manipulation of public opinion. Sometimes quantitative numbers make the point when followed up with some well chosen prose. I titled this one: Fuzzy, Oily, Windy Math (9/6).

Books are always a source for blog inspiration, so are other bloggers. One such post came about from reading another of my favorite bloggers and wondering about books that were significant at the moment in my life when they came into my hands and into my head. Momentarily Memorable Books (8/6).

I like to grace my blog with pictures. One of my favorite pencil-sharpening tasks it to search the web for potential images for future blogs. Once in awhile the images themselves are so overwhelming that they take over the post. Here is my best visual interlude from 2009. You gotta click thru to see the best Pictures of Earth (10/1).

Finally, my recent visit to Washington DC left me with the resolve that we all need to stand up, once again, and let our elected representatives know that we do not approve of the conduct of war. What a phrase: "Conduct of War". Pause along with me at the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial (12/15). Then write, call or email your feelings to someone in DC. Begin with Barack.

Feedback Please

Now that my blog has almost completely shed its poker origins and therefore about 50% of my readership as well. I have a request for those of you still seeking out my ponderings here. I have heard in the past that my writing at times sacrifices explanatory content for pithy brevity. Recently I have also had some private feedback that my current writing project (book) may be suffering from the same malady. So I ask you:

Is the blog too brief?

Am I too blunt, breviloquent, brusque, compendious, concise, preemptory, pithy, short, succinct, summary, tart, terse or unceremonious?    

Has this become just a running diary of miscellaneous content drifting towards a miasmic mishmash?

Would you prefer more detail, more bulk, more anything?

Do I leave too much dangling with vague references or the promise of future revelations?

Is the only purpose of life to ask the question: What is the purpose of life?

I have noticed that my readers tend to favor private emails over leaving a public comment. Either or any way you choose to communicate, please do. I am soliciting feedback for the future of Keeping Your Head in All the Games. I am not even vaguely considering abandoning this blog but I may racket it up a notch or simply drift in a different direction. What do you think?