A Straight Beats a Flush, Right?

I've remained largely poker-free for the last few days, and seem to be experiencing no ill effects. I did play a few freeroll satellites over the weekend at assorted B2B sites, burning some of my accumulated VIP points as entries. I also snuck in some Peep Sex at Full Tilt but got no love.

Thank Jebus the Suns sent the Lakers packing. Kobe, you're a great player. One of the best ever. All you have to do is keep your mouth shut and play, and you'd be universally adored. (Well, and not rape women). That's it. Simple subtraction. Yet you insist on preening and pouting and prima donna-ing, and doing everything but keeping your mouth shut and playing great basketball.

My thoughts on playoff basketball from last night: I hope Chris Kaman doesn't let his latent Neandertal genes express themselves and eat Steve Nash, 'cause Nash is fun to watch.

Still sweating out the CRYP options, as I was hoping for a little more follow through from the bounce last Friday. Monkey boy Jim Cramer suddenly decided to start touting one of my Kazakhstan oil plays on his show (Transmeridian Exploration - AMEX:TMY), which produced a nice pop this monring, but I'd almost have preferred if he'd just kept his mouth shut. Cramer doesn't exactly have the best record with his picks, and his initial recommendations usually lead to a lot of churn and volatility, as his monkey legions pile in and pile out.

Received out merit increases for the year at HyperMegaGlobalCorp. 4% sounds nice until you see the math and what it means, broken down by pay period, and then suddenly it's difficult not to feel like a rat, running through the same maze, over and over and over, for an ultimate reward that turns out to be a single, solitary peanut.

Sort of like, you know, a rat eating a peanut...