Republican Circus

This is where we are. Two of the most prominent candidates to lead the free world are currently lobbing insults at each others' wives like terminal adolescents on the playground. How in all the cold hells did we get here?

much peace,

tjb

Apparently a sleeping mountain lion with a broken leg was such an imminent danger that OPD had to discharge their shotguns 15 times to neutralize it.

Typical Nebraska hillbillies. It must have been coming right at them, Ned.

I'd like to reiterate that there have not been any documented cases of a mountain lion attacking a human in the history of Nebraska statehood (since 1867). At this point, Dumb Nebraska Rednecks are pitching a shutout.

Here's hoping that the mountain lions get one next.

much peace,
tjb

JeSuisCharlie

I have zero sympathy towards those who commit really real world evil in the name of their supernatural trump card. Fuck slate.com. It's not "racist" to mock Islam and their imaginary unicorn prophet. It's not racist to mock Christians or Jews or Hindus, etc. for their irrational belief in and worship of various magic unicorn sky fairies. Mocking those who consciously choose to adopt a fantastical ghost as their overlord is simply NOT the fucking same as racism.

I stand with the satirists who lampooned multiple imaginary religious icons (and deservedly so). I'm not going to lazily fucking qualify my scorn for their Muslim murderers by saying "Well, she shouldn't have dressed that way."

#JeSuisCharlie

much peace,
tjb

Afield in the City

Cold walk today, below freezing with 30mph north winds. I missed my long hair.

The new route I walk at lunch has me crossing a wide green space at a local college, then up a steep grassy hill dotted with small fir trees. Today was into the teeth of the wind, so I put my head down and fixed my eyes on green-grey December grass. As I slogged up the hill, I imagined I was trudging through moorish grass in the Desert of Wales.

much peace,
tjb

Yes, Football Matters

....but I don't really care about Nebraska football.

Spontaneous late November football that happens to occur in Nebraska, however, is immediately and wonderfully important.
Do days get better than this?

much peace,
tjb

Football Matters?

Well, the Omaha World Herald got their scalp. Lee Barfknecht has spent the last 24 hours furiously masturbating in an OWH restroom, while Steve Sipple from the Lincoln Journal Star sobbed uncontrollably at the door to Bo Pelini's office.

I'm ambivalent about Pelini, and thus about his firing. I think he's actually a pretty good guy and, in my inexpert opinion, a pretty good coach, but I don't really care that he's gone. I mean, he didn't win an outright conference title in his ninth season like Saint Tom Holy Christ Almighty Osborne, and he didn't finally win a national title in his 21st season like St. Tom H.C.A. Osborne, but at least Pelini didn't intimidate Kate McEwen and her family and sweetly coddle the guy who assaulted her, and at least he didn't help to hide Riley Washington's gun from the cops. Real Men Don't Use Porn,apparently, but they do drag women down the stairs, slap them around, then star in the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl.

What Pelini did do, alas, was hurt and offend Dirk Chatelain's gold-plated vagina so severely that Dirk cried bitter black and white years all over the newspaper for almost a year afterward. If only Bo had supported the assault and battery of college age women, but did so in a dry, folksy way that amused and simultaneously stroked the tender egos of OWH sportswriters.... Oh well, the only person who really suffers in all of this is Poor Dirk. After all, what is he going to cry about now?

Update: In case you don't know how Chatelain earned the contempt of Bo Pelini (along with that of any actual man who has attached and descended testicles), Chatelain penned a horribly constructed piece of shit hatchet job (which is almost exclusively what Chatelain does) about Taylor Martinez in 2011, then got a touch of the vapors and almost fainted away when Pelini called him on it at a press conference. The rest of the Omaha World Herald sportswriters all boiled out to white knight for Fair Maiden Dirk, and they've all been on the same ovulation cycle since. Those testosterone-devoid Sallys not only think nothing of ripping a 19-year-old ballplayer who played hurt and left it all on the field, they also believe they are Entitled to do so without any response or criticism leveled in their direction.

Fact: Chatelain is a simpering little weasel of a jock sniffer who desperately wants entry into the world of athletic male balls, but then is shocked, (shocked, I tell you!!!) when said balls don't smell like rose petals and Oprah's favorite lowfat lemon bread recipe. I mostly agree with moving on to a new coach, but I hate to see the entitled, whiny little pansies at the OWH get their scalp.

much peace,
tjb

Atonement

When I left the rehab hospital last summer, I went home in a turtle shell body brace and neck collar, and once again humping around on crutches. Prognosis was full recovery, but with a minimum of at least a year before I approached normal locomotion, and perhaps never reaching my previous level of athleticism (pedestrian as it may have been). I was so goddamn happy to be alive and out, though, that I couldn't bring myself to care too much about the temporary physical setbacks. I was content to stump around the house and yard getting incrementally stronger; content to simply revel in not being dead, or stuck with IVs, or strapped down and ventilated ... or so I thought.

One night I subsided into bed in my shell as usual, and after unstrapping and doing the careful back and forth to lever myself out of it, I quickly passed out. I dreamt, vividly, that I was on a long bike ride with Maury, Craig and some other folks. We were in the middle of riding home from a lakeside resort in Minnesota, and we had risen and left at dawn from our campsite in northern South Dakota. We stopped for breakfast at a McDonald's, of all places, and left our bicycles and gear at a wooden station constructed specifically for that purpose. Upon reaching the cash register, I realized I had left my wallet out with my gear. Amid the expected ribbing from my friends, I hurried out to get it. Time morphed in the way it does in dreams, and of a sudden I realized that Maury and Co. were back on their bikes (still laughing at Burbach, of course), and starting to ride away. Deciding in that instant to forgo breakfast, I started to jog towards my bicycle to catch up with them and then ... I was just running. Without effort or hindrance, I was running. Across the parking lot in the early sun,  through the damp grass and out onto the highway, I ate up the miles. Craig and the team were long gone, my bicycle forgotten, and I was sprinting, flying, non-stop to everywhere and nowhere. I ran until what seemed like early afternoon, when I slowed to a halt alone at the end of a little wooden footbridge spanning a little creek in central South Dakota. Again, the dream shifted. In a curious juxtaposition of consciousness, I stood among the trees by the creek, and simultaneously inhabited the tired broken body I'd left lying on the narrow bed back in the really real world. My dream body was whole, strong and filled to bursting with energy and the liberty of flight, fidgeting to run farther and faster. Almost instantly, though, I was plunged into wakefulness, my leg and back throbbing, and the pillow wet from unconscious tears. In myself, I am scornful of the pointless weakness of self-pity; but for a few minutes that morning, I was awash in mourning for remembered health and function. Reminding myself, though, that much worse things have happened to much nicer guys than me, I ultimately shoved the self-pity into the dark corner where it belongs, levered myself back into my shell and crutched out to start the day.

Fast forward 15 months, and I'm running in the real world. Just on the treadmill at the gym, but journey of a thousand miles, blah, blah, blah. I started three weeks ago with .20 mile intervals, walking in between. I've since increased my running interval to.65 miles, alternating with sets of anaerobic exercise. The pain is considerable, but the last year has found me in a long-term, committed relationship with that particular sensation. We're the proverbial old married couple, she and I, and I go about my business with her comforting voice ceaselessly muttering and criticizing in the background.

The running I do in real life is a clumsy, plodding exercise in penance. It's nothing like the coruscating flight of my dream. Except that it is. Somewhere beneath the thudding, uneven steps, beneath the drudgery, discomfort and the smell of hot self, there is a small core of concentrated and joyous intensity, not so unlike that effortless sprint across the landscape of South Dakota. Maybe it's the years of wrestling practice, or the rehabs after twice tearing my ACL, or maybe it's the aforementioned intimacy I've developed with my pain receptors, but I absolutely find exhilaration in struggle.

Anyway, I'm off to the gym to run.

much peace,
tjb