FULL TILT POKER BLOG

#360 – Mojo Ricin

Posted by Editor | Filed under I = Idiot, News stories outside poker

Sorry to interrupt my coverage of the NBC Heads-Up Championship, but you’ll understand why I have to for this story …

An international news story is developing about a man in Las Vegas who has been hospitalized for two weeks in critical condition after staying in a hotel room where the deadly poison ricin was found. I’m reading these stories with a mixture of interest, curiosity, and alarm.

I’m not exaggerating when I say I am laughing out loud as tears stream down my face.

I wrote in my prior blog about the crummy hotel where I stayed for the 2006 World Series of Poker. Instead of a wake-up call, the fire alarm went off at 9 AM. Once, I wrote, “I can’t tell you what set off the fire alarm but I can tell you what the prostitute in the room next door wears for pajamas.” This is where the chip stayed who someone tried entering in the main event. This is where I came back to my room at midnight and saw someone digging a hole behind the hotel.

I was paying my own way in 2006 but Uncle Tilty was picking up the tab for 2007. Still, I felt it was proper to stay at the same place on Tilty’s dime as my own. After four days, however, someone punched a hole in the window of my Mercedes and stole the best navigation system I will ever own. When I went to the front desk to report this, I had to wait while another guest complained about someone who apparently had a key to his room and had removed several items. Needless to say, that was the end of my stay at the Smoke & Disinfectant Inn, as I called it.

THAT’S WHERE THEY FOUND THE RICIN.

So much of the story as it’s starting to unfold sounds familiar. Like how the guy was in the hospital for two weeks and the hotel suspected something only because they went to his room to evict him.

Two weeks? Wouldn’t you think the maid would figure out that the guy was gone sometime before that. (Not to mention being exposed to this poison so deadly that it will kill you to inhale an amount that would fit on the head of a pin.) I’m not surprised the cleaning crew was both safe and absent. They’re supposed to clean the rooms weekly but they never ran out of excuses for neglecting that duty during my time there. They changed cleaning services; they thought I was in the room; when I said “I’m begging you to clean the room today,” they thought I meant to change the date starting a WEEK from today; etc. etc. etc.

Vials of ricin and anarchist literature found in the room? One time I opened a cabinet beneath the TV and found a crusted CD case containing a bunch of disks from Slayer and Suicidal Tendencies.

It’s a horrifying, bizarre, scary story. Yet for me, it’s strangely unsurprising. I knew that hotel would show up in the news sometime, where right outside there was a murky puddle of stagnant water in the middle of July. I wouldn’t have predicted this – well, not specifically.

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