Jack Lemmon as Shelly Levene from the movie, Glengarry Glen Ross.

Channeling my inner Shelley "the machine" Levene as I prepare to enter the bleak and lonely landscape  of cold calling trying to sell July 5 on the Smith River.  I am motivated by fear, desperation and paranoia.  I am chanting the A,B and C's of cold calling: "Always, Be, Closing..."   I am a beast.

Springtime in the Rockies

Yesterday there were three suicides in Montana with temperatures in the 30's and snow coming is sideways.  Today just as cold, snowy and windy.  More suicides?  Springtime in the Rockies.

water without pity

I crossed Crazy Woman creek south of Buffalo, Wyoming today.  The Big Horns off to the west with snow in the peaks and the foothills starting to green.  The Crazy Woman was a Cheyenne, who prostituted herself to soldiers.  By doing so the Cheyenne thought that only a crazy person would do so.  The creek today is muddy and meanders over the prairie.

Easter Sunday

Easter is about a boulder being removed from a cave and hope for the rest of the world.   Hope for a way out of the madness along with the endless procession of bad ideas, bad policy and bad politics.  The boulder from the cave transcends politics.  It is about spring.  The Cubs have a chance for a world series and this is the year the Seattle Mariners get it right. 

It is a wonderful time of year to go to a stream and tie on a dry fly.  It doesn’t matter if trout aren’t rising to the surface.  It only matters that a trout might rise to a fly.  It’s Easter and Jesus worked with fishermen he would of appreciated the hope in the effort

Read it over and over before you go to war.

Nefarious War

Nefarious War

Last year we fought by the head-stream of the Sang-kan
This year we are fighting on the Tsung-ho road.
We have washed our armor in the waves of the Chiao-chi lake,
We have pastured our armor horses on the Tien-shan’s snowy slopes.
The long, long war goes on then thousand miles from home,
Our three armies are worn and grown old.

The barbarian does man-slaughter for plowing;
On this yellow sand-plains nothing has been seen but
blanched skulls and bones.
Where the Chin emperor built the walls against the Tartars,
There the defenders of Han are burning beacon fires.
The beacon fires burn and never go out,
There is no end to war!

In the battlefield men grapple each other and die;
The horses of the vanquished utter lamentable cries to heaven,
While ravens and kites peck at human entrails.
Carry them up in their flight, and hang on the branches of dead trees.
So, men are scattered and smeared over the dead grass,
And the generals have accomplished nothing.

Oh, nefarious war! I see why arms
Were so seldom used by the benign sovereign

your inner Newt

I am in yoga class watching a young pliable instructor tell us to go to the monkey position.  I assume the monkey position which is painful.  My thighs and lower back are burning in pain.  The instructor’s voice is soft and pliant as she tells us to release our competitiveness.  I feel no release just rippling waves of pain as I am thirty seconds into the pose.  She beckons us not be judgmental.  I think I want to kill her.   I start to channel my inner Newt.

Gingrich had a tough night in the debates.  It looks like he has been frequenting Cracker Barrels across the South.   The Cracker Barrel is a restaurant that pays homage to pork and high cholesterol.  My instructor now has me moving out of monkey into dog.  I feel violated and my inner Newt growls with anger.  She is mumbling something about core and peace.  

I have been suspended in the dog pose for an eternity (ten seconds) she wants my right leg to go parallel to the floor then bend my right knee and do something it wasn’t designed for in my life time.  Newt wants to go to the moon I just want out of the class.  We are both trapped in an arena of ignominy.  Unfortunately, it is of our own making.  Newt teaches us there is no humiliation we can’t bear with Romney bitching slapping him last night.  Newts ex-wife is expelling a bad marriage over the television air waves.  But it is nothing like the torturer in front of me telling me to listen to my body.  My body wants percocets and anti-inflammatory drugs instead I am in happy baby pose.  She must die.

praying

Mitt Romney and his sons at the end of the day take off their mormon underwear and briefly chant together:

Newt Gingrich is a cocksucker, Newt Gingrich is a cocksucker .....  They are waiting for the power of prayer to unfold.