The King of Montana

Fool Dog and The Legend of the Sun, by Mark Anthony Given

2012-01-28T14:25:00.014-07:00

A GREAT MANY YEARS AGO when the Crows were a very numerous people and the favorites of the Sun, the Sun came among them and took a Crow woman as a wife. They had a splendid lodge where the woman lived respected by the tribe and occasionally the Sun came down and dwelt with her for a time. The Sun favored the Crows because of his love for his wife and blessed them with abundance of food, corn, and buffalo and success over their enemies.

          BUT THERE WAS A FOOL-DOG among the Crows, a man who was supposed to be possessed with an evil spirit and not responsible for his conduct. He roamed about the village, doing hurt to whom he would and no one took him to task because he was a fool-dog and couldn't help it. Once when the Sun was absent from his lodge the fool-dog visited it and in spite of the tears and entreaties of the wife of the Sun, ravished her. She bore her shame in silence, but prepared herself for death. When the Sun came she confessed to him what the fool-dog had done and put herself to death before his eyes.
          THEN THE SUN WAS ANGRY with the Crows for the wrong that had been done him and the loss of his beloved wife and determined to destroy them. He caused their corn to fail,
prevented the buffalo from coming to their country and gave their enemies power over them. Then were the Crows forced to become wanderers on the earth, seeking a new home where they might have food and rest. A long time they wandered, suffered grievously from famine and in danger of total destruction, when the White Wolf who was the servant of the Sun took pity upon them' and resolved to save them. Coming among them he told them to make a pile of rice stalk and other fuel. They were then to make little pellets of meat and corn meal and throw them one by one up on the pile until the pile burst into flames when ten buffalo would arise from the midst of the flame, all of which the Crows must destroy; should one escape, he would go to the Sun and tell him what the Crows were doing, then there would be no hope for them.
          THE CROWS WERE IN DISTRESS at this, for though they could find enough meat for the sacrifice, they did not believe there was so much as a kernel of corn among them all, but at last it was ascertained that an old woman had preserved a small quantity for seed which she gladly contributed since it was to save them from starvation. Ten pellets were made, the pile of rice stalks and other fuel was gathered and while the assembled warriors stood ready with drawn bows to kill the expected buffalo, the pellets were thrown one by one up on the pile. The first produced no result, the second, the third and so on to ninth followed but no sign of flames appeared and the Crows began to despond when the tenth was tossed into the pile a bright flame burst forth, and ten well flavored buffalo galloped out of the midst of the pile. The Crows let fly a shower of arrows and the ten buffalo fell dead in their midst.
          THEN THERE WAS A FEAST and joy pervaded the camp. At the suggestion of White Wolf, the charm was repeated, the next flame producing twenty buffalo, the next thirty and so on, ten more each time till the number reached ninety, all of which the Crows destroyed, and had food in abundance. In these days the Crows did not possess either fire arms, or horses and it became difficult for them on foot and with only bows and arrows to kill the multitude of buffalo that now appeared, so that their very abundance was a source of disquiet, lest one should escape and letting the Sun kindle afresh his anger against the Crows. When the number of buffalo reached one hundred; this misfortune happened, they killed only ninety, and the one that escaped fled direct to the Sun and told him the whole story.
          THAT WAS WHEN THE SUN WAS indeed angry, but rather with the
White Wolf because he had not been a faithful servant, than with the Crows, who had showed themselves a brave people in adversity. He told White Wolf to go with the Crows and tell them that he should no more endeavor to destroy them and then condemned him to be forever a vagabond and outcast among the animals of the earth. This the Wolf has been to this day; and the Sun has never since taken a wife from among the Crows.
_____________________________________
From the Bradley Manuscript at the Montana Historical Society, Helena Montana.

Big Knot on Head v. Montana Territory, by Mark Anthony Given

2012-01-25T10:18:00.000-07:00

THE SKY TO THE EAST promised another blazing hot Montana day as the darkness dissolved and orange splotches gave way to oozing azure light. Just a slight breeze but the old Indian held fast to the wooden fence post trying to see anything, but the throbbing over his right eye from last night’s encounter with his wife’s mean right hook obscured even that.

“Get back in here!” Deer Run, his wife hollered.

Kills on Top just finished pissing and put up a brave trot back into the small two room primitive homestead built in the side of a Butte in the otherwise open plains of eastern Montana.

“Two Moon’s,” Kill’s on Top said.

Two Moons? Deer Run questioned. Where the hell you see two Moon it’s black as ink out there?

“l know. I couldn’t think of anything else and all the good names are taken.” He sheepishly replied.

“No they are not. We‘re naming this scrawny kid “Big Knot on Head,’ for that whopper you got shinning there.”

BIG KNOT ON HEAD didn’t have the opportunity to tell the grizzled old judge who looked like he was in a hurry to be somewhere other than here, up behind the giant Oak engraved desk, all that. The Clerk of Court, a stern old woman with a bun who refused any eye contact in the administering of justice read the Bill of Information with restrained glee.

“The Indian, the Defendant, Big Knot on Head”, she paused and looked around as if she was going spit out the remnants of his name on the floor but thought better of it and continued, “the State’s Attorney for the Montana Territory alleges did steal a single Bay Gelding full grown horse, belonging to one Buck Given’s of Grizzly Gulch, Montana. The horse was stolen from downtown Helena, tied up in front of the Parrot Confectionary on Last Chance Gulch., Lewis and Clark County, Montana, this 21^st day of January, 1887. The year of Our Lord.

“How does he plead? How do you plead Big Knot on Head?” The old judge was riffling thru reams of files and loose papers looking for his pen knife he had just sit down so he could clean his pipe.

THE INTERPRETER WAS a middle aged man who was also a bartender known by most of the court room. A brusque hairy man with nervous eyes he wore a pouch around his neck to carry tobacco and worn buckskins covered by a mens dress coat he kept hung up in the back of the courtroom for these occasions when his services were needed.

BIG KNOT ON HEAD was small and wiry with long hair with just a piece of old canvas draped over him he stood ram rod straight like he either had to go to the bathroom real bad or he was trying to be invisible. He had been in the old jail for nearly a week and besides being constantly hungry he was in dire need of straight shot or two rot gut whiskey. The worst stuff you got because he wanted to get this over with… to be continued. 1/25/2012 10:12:24 AM

Cowgirl Up by Mark Anthony Given, Further Misadventures of an Irish Rabbi in the back country of Modern day Montana.

2011-12-31T17:17:00.002-07:00

Cowgirl Up by Mark Anthony Given, Further Misadventures of an Irish Rabbi in the back country of Modern day Montana.

So I placed this ad on Craigslist:

TYPIST GIRLFRIEND:

Need Hot young girlfriend who can type: aspiring
screenwriter with too high standards; https://post.craigslist.org/manage/2732694810

HALF A DOZEN Spammers right off the bat and out of the blue a jewel stumbles out. Says she fits all the credentials’ by sworn oath (I been fooled before by 200 lb plus women with girl next door profile picture and spin a yarn as far as the front door opens and Bam, Back to Reality! “Oh, I thought you wouldn’t mind a few extra pounds,” or “I gained a few pounds since that picture was taken.” I have heard it all. I made this one recite the federal perjury statute)(28 USC 1746), and reveal her mother’s maiden name so I had no choice but to pull out Old Stumbling Block #2: Works like a charm; Jeigermeister and T-Bone Steak at this roadside steakhouse halfway to the North Entrance of the Yellowstone National Park halfway between Livingston and Gardiner, Montana sit’s a real roadhouse/steakhouse/cowboy Beat’em Bar called the Old Saloon and Livery Stable Steakhouse out in the middle of nowhere. Place where even if they do call the law (which nobody wants to do by the way), you still have nearly a half hour to keep fighting or get some yonder.

Contestant #338 was 28 (way outside my known limitations but she invoked the rare “Hot Ass,” under 30 rule and I figured I’d weed her out like culling sheep…… You got to give ‘em a running head start for kick their hind legs out from under them, it’s always more memorable finale splash that way. She ain’t gonna remember anything of this tomorrow anyway.

Black hair (Not a good sign), built like a brick shit house at about a “Buck 10,” (110 lbs.), drop dead gorgeous or she wouldn’t have made it to the table. Sitting inside the true horse stables were placed one lone dining table and the just half stalls with candle light and lanterns and saddles on the wall. Couple little hot young go getter waitress’s buzzing around. Place gets packed for about an hour and then settles down every evening. I used to live a half a mile away and walked to work. Someone told me they needed a cook and I showed up Monday morning at 10 am to get the job with resume and line of bullshit in hand and walked right into the middle of a burglary investigation. I noticed all the cop cars there but I was steamed up to get the job and barged in there and handed the manager Bonnie my papers. She pointed to the fresh gouges in the floor where someone had dragged the safe to the front door and then the back door. They all gave me the once over but when they seen I was applying for a job they ignored me. She gave me the job later that day or the next. Knocking out a hundred or so steaks a night was a piece of cake if I could keep the waitresses off the poker machines.

WHEN WE WALKED IN THE OLD SALOON AND LIVERY STABLE in Emigrant or Pray, Montana about 10 pm on a Friday night it was in full swing as I knew it would be. It had been nearly ten years since I worked there but I just knew someone would recognize me but it didn’t matter. They weren’t watching me anyway when from behind me appeared every young man’s (an apparently old man) dream and every mother’s nightmare. Expensive denims slinging ass from front to back and side to side I swore I seen every head in their turn when she shifted her right ass cheek to miss the left side of that regulation pool table on the way to the Phillies Room. When she came back out and knocked back two Jeigermeister’s I had waiting for her I felt the air in the room change from “who’s getting their ass beat tonight to who’s getting lucky….and smiles all around… I pulled my my old penitentiary bad boy routine on them by just staring at the floor like it contained the secrets of the universe and mumbling shit like I was fix’n to start bar room brawl by myself…

SHE WAS FLIRT’N AROUND like a school girl at her first night at camp, playing pool and dancing with complete strangers. I posted up in the far corner where I could put my back to the wall and watch the front door and the back door out of habit. Other than my overtly dangerous demeanor, when people seen I just one of the guys that ain’t got time for nobody or nothing; Miss me with the the dumb shit, small talk, weather, fish’n nothing; I seen a 100 nights in this sad country bar. My heads rocking, I’m having a good time, just don’t fuck with me. I get mad real easy and I’m stone sober. We were half way into Steaks and fries when the Jeigermiester must have kicked in because,

THEN SHIT HEADED SOUTH. Right out of the blue thus crazy broad slams her damn drink on the bar and announces, “When I drink, everybody drinks!” Fifteen minutes later drunk fuck’s were swig’n right out of the $20 pitchers of beer and the bartender is looking concerned. Right in the middle of our $22 dollar succulent t-Bone Steaks and fries this party animal jumps up and holler’s “When I eat, everybody eats!” Oh, Lord, I seen the dishwasher jump up and grab a waitress smock and ticket book and I knew we was in for a long night. animal slams her shot glass on our table and holler’s to the whole bar, “When I eat, everybody eats!” waitress was getting worked, I seen her ticket book peeled half in half with orders she hadn’t even turned in. Fuck me; I couldn’t get far enough back in that corner by the door. My only saving grace was this giant Moose head hanging over the potbelly stove in the middle of the little dining area adjacent to the bar blocking my view of half the participants. I was instinctually counting the steps to the front door when this crazy bitch slams her shot glass down on the end of the bar and the damn jukebox skipped or stopped or something, because the next thing I knew it was deathly quiet in there and the whole room’s head shifted from her to me by the door after she hollered, “When I pay, everybody pay’s!!”

WHAT THE HELL, she done wrung up four hundred dollars worth of food and drink and I wasn’t about to pay for all this. Apparently neither was she because when she seen them all looking at me she made a run for it, the length of the whole bar and out the door and the screen door slammed and I thought it might be my turn to exit stage left. I bolted for the front door too and was glad I had sense enough to park way out back before I realized there was only one way out of there unless I wanted to do a little midnight off- roading. (I’ll finish this tomorrow; were just getting warmed up. By the time I get this craigslist special back to Helena she had tried to use her head to take out mail boxes in her own neighborhood and then insisted we piss in her neighbors pool for some long ago misdeed)..12/31/2011 4:59:53 PM

Montana in the Spring 09

2011-12-21T11:14:00.000-07:00

My Attorney is a Streetwalker, By Mark Anthony Given

2011-12-13T11:35:00.000-07:00

When I was the head of the inmate law library at FCI Seagoville, Texas back in the early 90's I used to pull this case off the shelf's every few weeks and read aloud from the transcripts and we rolled in laughter at this:

US v. Flint, 756 F.1358-62 (9th Cir. 1985):
The dialogue in which appellant and the Magistrate engaged was as follows:
THE MAGISTRATE: Mr. Flynt, if you tell me that you do not understand that you have the right to have an attorney represent you, I am going to be obliged, in order to protect your rights, to appoint an attorney to represent you.
THE DEFENDANT: Don't do me any favors, your honor. I mean, you are the madam, and over here (indicating) is another whore and this guy who says he is my attorney is a streetwalker.
THE MAGISTRATE: Mr. Flynt, I expect you to behave yourself here.
THE DEFENDANT: Then you might as well put my ass in jail. Now, I am trying to be nice to you, god damn it. Now, are you going to let me read my arraignment and plea or are you going to put me in jail again? What the fuck is going on here?
* * *
THE MAGISTRATE: All right. I am going to appoint Mr. Isaacman to represent you as your attorney for these proceedings. You may choose to call--
THE DEFENDANT: Then take my ass to jail, cocksucker, because I--
THE MAGISTRATE: All right.
THE DEFENDANT: --refuse to go through this bullshit.
THE MAGISTRATE: All right, would you proceed with the arraignment?
THE DEFENDANT: You dumb, ignorant mother fucker. Now, I am telling you; you are not going to get away with this.
THE MAGISTRATE: Proceed with the arraignment.
THE DEFENDANT: There are [sic] no fucking way you are going to get away with it. You are denying me my counsel of my choice. You are just as dumb as that god damn Burger up there on the Supreme Court, and I am ready to stay in jail until hell freezes over or until I have the attorney of my choice.
You god damn, no good, 14 karat piece of shit, you. Just cause you got on that robe, you don't have any god damn right to abuse the Constitution that you are supposed to be upholding.
(He is just getting warmed up!!)
Appellant's remarks were a part of the following colloquy:
Q: Mr. Flynt, is there any other reason you could give us that you already haven't as to why you said the things you did to Magistrate McMahon on December 12 at the hearing?
A: Yes, there is, Mr. Kahn.
Q: What is it?
A: I went to the United States Supreme Court and I called every one of them no-good, lousy, dumb, mother-fuckers, what assholes they were. And that I would be back as soon as I was allowed out of prison to tell them mother-fuckers they had violated my goddamn mother-fucking civil rights as long as they intend to, and if I am not kept in prison--
MR. KAHN: Your Honor--
[THE DEFENDANT]:--until hell freezes over, I will kill--
MR. KAHN: Your Honor, can we please--
THE DEFENDANT:--every mother-fucking one of them. Blow those mother-fucking judges--
MR. KAHN: Could we have a short recess, please, your Honor--
THE DEFENDANT:--and I don't want--
THE COURT: No, Mr. Kahn, he knows what he is doing.
THE DEFENDANT: No--I don't--
MR. KAHN: Your Honor--
THE DEFENDANT:--and I am crazier than hell. I want a competency hearing.

The exchange between appellant and the court was as follows:
FLYNT: I move that you call the U.S. marshal to the stand that was present when I took the drugs, when I was flung on the floor by an inmate, and when I was kicked when I was smacked. I want the U.S. marshal called, I also want the guard called that tipped me off that this asshole was sending me to Springfield.
THE MARSHALL: Open up the door.
THE COURT: No, that is all right. He's got the responsibility.
That is going to cost you 30 days, Mr. Flynt.
THE DEFENDANT: Hey, you know what punishment--is. Well, you don't give a fuck.
THE COURT: Mr. Flynt, you just keep that up.
THE DEFENDANT: Fuck you. Give me life without parole you foul mother-fucker.
THE COURT: That is another 30.
THE DEFENDANT: I want you--give me more. You chicken-shit son-of-a-bitch.
THE COURT: That is another 30 days.
THE DEFENDANT: Give me more.
3
Appellant's final outburst occurred as follows:
THE COURT: For the contempt of December 12th, 1983, the defendant shall be committed to the custody of the Attorney General or his representative for a period of six months, and for each of the contempts upon which he was cited here in court today, 30 days. Each of those sentences are to run consecutively to each other and not concurrently.
THE DEFENDANT: Give me more, mother-fucker. Is that all you can give me, you chicken-shit cocksucker? Lay 18 months on me, you dumb mother-fucker.
THE COURT: Now--
THE DEFENDANT: Fuck you in your ass.
THE COURT: That is enough.
THE DEFENDANT: You suck--
THE COURT: That will be another six months which will be also consecutive.
THE DEFENDANT: I want you to give me more. Give me more.

For the sake of completeness, we note that there is a serious question whether the punishment, as it was imposed in this case, actually served the district court's purpose. As portions of the colloquy between appellant and the district court strongly suggest, it is just as likely that it served appellant's purpose instead. In any event, it would not be in the best interests of the judicial system or the public to prolong this travesty any further. The time has come to draw the curtain on a seamy and tawdry episode. We do so now by vacating appellant's sentences.
REVERSED AND VACATED.

Split Deposit Chapter Four, Best Friends, By Mark Anthony Given

2011-12-09T16:12:00.002-07:00

Best Friends, By Mark Anthony Given

"Heah, can I have that Travaian book when you are done with it?" That's how I met Bruce Hernandez in the St. Mary Parish Prison in Franklin, Louisiana in the early 80's. I was setting out a 30 day sentence for possession of stolen property having been reduced from Grand Theft Auto. Bruce was my best friend and the father of my girlfriend's two kids. Huh? When he got out of Hunt Correctional facility after serving 40 plus months for walking prescriptions I moved over to the beach in Biloxi to let them have another go at it. I told both of them it wouldn't work but heah, give it a try. Three months later he was living in my place on the beach and I was back in Gentilly in New Orleans. A year after we got back together she had a baby Jasmine Hernandez who is 25 now. Strange dynamic but works for people who want to see their spouse happy with or without them. Bruce and Brenda showed me how to write prescriptions and either walk them into the pharmacist or split the proceeds with someone to do it. Nearly every woman or family has prescriptions lying around they didn't get. I'd white out all the hand writing, touch it up with a black pen, re-photocopy it until I would cut it out just the right size, run a Red Magic Marker across the top to make it look like it was tore off a pad and you are in busy. Go into the pharmacist after doctor hours; I’d just leave it and tell them I'd be back for it but not say when. I'd wait a few hours and stand out front the store on my tippy toes and call the pharmacy. I'd watch everything they do; do they look in the Bin for it? What's the doctor's name they ask to verify. I ask how much and when they close and see if she covers the phone or signals for the pharmacist, just anything unusual, especially after I hang up if she makes a Bee line for the pharmacist... Normally, I'd walk right in seeing everything was fine. Thirty-Six Four Milligram of Dilaudid cost about .90 cents of the counter and sold for $40-50 all day long. Crush'em up and dump it in the back of a fit, no backroom operation straight from the pharmacy... Fifty Percodan cost $24 and sold for $5 each and you can soak'em and shoot them.

I swiped that tricked out pickup truck alongside a business on Highway 90 East of Morgan City, Louisiana on a Sunday morning about ten o'clock with a hangover from Hell. By 9 am down there it's like the tropics your soaking wet from preparation. A very famous band from south Louisiana, Zebra, had played the night before on the out skirts of town in a gravel parking lot roadhouse. The best Led Zeppelin cover band ever, the place was packed and I woke up in a hotel room with a girl and other people I didn't know. I just got up and left because I couldn't sleep anymore and everyone else was sleeping so I headed back to Houma, Louisiana the next town over where I was a Roughneck on Odeco Charlie, a famous oil rig in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico. I started stealing cars when I was 12 or thirteen in New York. I was born in Florida and the New York winters were kicking my ass. In the winter people leave their vehicles running when they run in a store. The first car I hopped in was my dream car; I absolutely was powerless not to steal this car! A 1972 Emerald Green Buick Rivera with a rolling speedometer... Crushed velour interior right off the show room floor it seemed. It was about 8:30 at night, two and a half foot of snow in Rochester, New York right on Parcells Avenue. I was supposed to be walking 5-6 blocks to my brother Bill and his wife Charlene’s house and was only a half a block from their house where this Emerald Chariot awaited idling in the snow I couldn't see what it was until I got up on top of it and stopped right in my tracks! Damn it Man! I don't think I even hesitated I jumped in that son bitch where it was warm and toasty and the radio playing Beach Boy's Good Vibrations! I eased that warm cosy bitch into a couple of runs in the road and made the first right and did almost a complete circle and parked it where I could see it from my attic bedroom at my brother's place. I needed a ride to school in the morning and all this snow was tiresome...

The first time I seen Bruce handwrite a doctor’s prescription for 36 K-4’s and the an expensive antibiotic with it, was right in the front seat of the Baron Red Hot Car in the front of the pharmacy out in Laplace or across the lake I forget it was like watching someone printing money. He walked in and walked right back out with a little white bag with nearly $3,000 in Dilaudid in less four minutes. Bruce had shot himself in the head with a shotgun despot over Brenda and alcohol and now wore a Black Eye patch like Captain Kid. You could see scar tissue all around it. How do you miss with a shot gun? I never thought to ask him because I was always led to believe he was shot in a hunting blind when the rifle slipped from a standing position. Years later in a jail cell in some heart to heart I got the truth.

WHEN MY THIRTY DAYS WERE UP I hitch hiked to Florida were I promptly swiped a brand new Baron Red Chrysler LeBaron with a fake rag top and white leather interior from a car dealership along the interstate in Orlando, Florida about 11pm at night. The place was closed and fenced in the front. This thing was sitting right by the garage doors and the door was partially open. I just rolled across a little patch of grass into a Pizza Hut parking lot and headed to find a license plate for this thing that had 31 miles on it…. Damn!

I probably swiped 15-20 cars when I was a kid. And

it ain't brag'n. When you bust out of foster care and am on the

streets at 12 years old there’s a whole different set of rules.
Swiping a sandwich out of a grocery store is the only meal will you have that day... sleeping in laundry mats, people’s couches, basement laundry's... I didn't like being a kid, nobody will hire you, and you don't know anything, lecherous bastards looking at you like desert. Being a kid sucks.
The next morning I snuck out during breakfast to start
my new Emerald Chariot so it would warm up before school. This wasn't exactly the suburbs so I had to keep an eye on it before someone else swiped it!
After doing a couple donuts in the Senior Parking area
of my high school me and my buddy’s mud bogged the thing all thru residential lawns in the snow, knocking over mail boxes and running people off the road. At lunch time we took it a few blocks over by the French's Mustard plant and played Ping Pong with it until it didn't want to run anymore. I have no idea why.
Bruce Hernandez spent probably around thirty years on

the Caffin Avenue methadone Clinic right down the street from Fat Domino’s house. Well, used to be house. The house nor Bruce has been seen since August 29, 2005 when hurricane Katrina nearly leveled the Ninth Ward. Because he was on the Methadone clinic and still doing dope he couldn't get any takeout so he couldn’t go far...
WHEN I PICKED HIM AND BRENDA UP in that brand new Baron Red rag top outside their house at 3906 Franklin Avenue in the Gentilly section of New Orleans four blocks from a interstate, she sat next to me and him in the back. Bruce smoked like a broken stove so i had to keep stopping to let him out because he wasn't smoking in my brand new stolen car! No he wasn't. I didn't let them put their damn feet on the dash either. A few days later we were sitting in it and e notices scuff marks on the ceiling. What the fuck? Who done that? He was starting to act like me. I acted real concerned and used a paper napkin to try and remove it. I didn't have the heart to tell him it was his wife's footprints where I had tried to knock the bottom out of her pussy the night before right there in the front seat while he was knocked in the back!

We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us. -Joseph Campbell

The Mechanic, By Mark Anthony Given

2011-12-09T10:54:00.001-07:00

EVERY PRO BLACKJACK PLAYER PLAYS at least two hands at once, it just doubles everything and it isn’t any harder. Ideally I want to be at the $25 blackjack table playing at least two hands (I could play the whole table), for 20 minutes at 4 o’clock in the morning and be in and out with a grand or so in less time than that. I’ll never forget the look on the faces of several Pit Bosses huddled together covering their mouths so I couldn’t read their lips. When this thing is working on all fours it should be win one, lose one, 25$ bet lost, bet $50 win: I got my $25 back and made $25. After less than 10 minutes I’m up $700 and still making the same bet! They are pulling their hair out because they never seen this. Every five minutes I get interrupted to be offered a “Players Card” or “dinner for you and a guest”, on and on they want me in their system to monitor what the hell I’m doing. I got the same story for them every time; I’m on my way to the airport, I’ll see you next time….”4/18/2011 10:43:34 AM They never seen a grown man in a $1,000 dress suit mix all his different colored/denomination chips together in a pile, and keep playing with them like a kindergarten child. I do that so they can’t keep a running count of how bad I’m spanking their ass, seaming at will. If I am the only one at the table they can look at the dealer’s bank and get a exact count. Every two or three minutes you will see me pocket a few big denomination chips. Drinking bottled water or hot chocolate and no smoking I could blend in to woodwork if I wasn’t walking out of there with their money. Nine hands and right at the eight minute mark the dealer gets a tap on the shoulder and they switch dealers to right the rhythm in the casinos favor. It doesn’t work against guys like me. At the Seventeen minute mark they switch the dealer again and it’s some old hippy hangover from the Seventies with hippy beads and tie die shit. Every time she scoops up the cards for no apparent reason she will reach over and tap the table to signal a new hand. Her mojo doesn’t work either, even after 6 straight loses I bet 7, 8, 7 and recouped every dime not counting the double down on the second 7 bet.

THAT’S WHEN THEY BRING OUT THE MECHANIC, usually a real lucky Irishman like myself, but you can usually tell the Mechanic because he has thirty or forty grand of jewels trying to blind me with his bling. I can beat him but twenty five minutes is my limit because my concentration starts to fail, I’m up almost a grand. “Color me up.” That’s my mantra….the dealer takes his time because the last thing they want is for me to leave but I know you haven’t won a dime until you make it to the parking lot. I never even stop at the Tellers cage to cash in the chips, there’s no hurry there always open I mosey out of there just in time to see a Supervisor step off the elevator 50 feet away with a couple of minions heading straight at me. They look at me like a lab specimen as I walk by and act like I never even notice them. Straight thru the front door past valet parking and head straight out into the fresh air with a slight smile on my face as I walk like I know where I am going, but I’m just trying to shake the adrenalin rush off like a small line of coke without the jitters…

The Real Drug Store Cowboy, By Mark Anthony Given

2011-12-07T18:07:00.002-07:00

Tony’s Discount Drugs

I’M RIDING THROUGH Ocean Springs, Mississippi it’s 4 am and 64 degrees and the sun will be up soon. Tony’s Discount Drugs in a strip mall next to an abandoned grocery store looks like a good place to break thru the cinder block wall in the utility closet and tiptoe over to the pharmacist goody drawer. I remember my buddy from New York living next to me on the beach in Biloxi, the next town over telling me this pharmacy was fat because it was so big and everything on the shelf was stretched out to take up space, they must be doing a booming pill business. Was they ever! I cased it a time or two and wound up parking in a McDonalds down the road and doubling back over behind it where I easily scaled up the back of the buildings pipes and stuff.

I scanned the whole place and seen a cinder block, sitting on top of a piece of plywood, sitting on top of a 18” duct vent with the fan missing and two bare wires showing. Huh, I remove the stuff and I’m looking down at a big rack of candy bars, on the floor of the barely lighted store. I just happened to have my handy 20 foot of soft rope and the Superman pillow case off my girlfriends’ kid’s bed stuffed down the front of my pants for just this occasion. I tied the rope off and down I went, sliding straight down a huge round stainless steel air conditioning vent till I got to the bottom, maneuvered around the rack and just set there about 30-40 seconds waiting to get attacked by dogs with their voice box gone, I didn’t know what to expect. The fact that it only took a ten second slide down the shoot and here I was in wonderland had me a little surprised but I still had work to do. The first thing I seen was a huge aluminum ladder laying down nearby so it set it up under the hole in the ceiling I had just came out of, grabbed a candy bar and moseyed on to the back….

It get back into the pharmacy and it was a little better lighted so I was ducking down pulling open all the drawers until I found one locked, Bingo, right where the pharmacist stands all day a big 12” deep by 33x18 all fire resistant aluminum. Didn’t happen to have a pry bar or a cheater pipe, so I just started pulling on that sum bitch and before I took to all my strength the levee broke and Payyoh! pills were flying everywhere. Holy Shit! The fucking mother lode: 12 bottles of 4 mg. Dilaudid, 10 bottles of 100 mg. of Demerol, Tuinal, Seconal, Percodan, Percoset, you fuck’n name it. Four Hunfred Qualuudes! There was so much Schedule II stuff there I couldn’t tie the top of my Superman suitcase. Damn, I better pick up a little Tussionex Suspension cough syrup off the back shelf for this itchy throat. Grabbed two quart bottles and stopped by the cash register. Nothing in the draws, I look all over all over the place, nothing. I give the back door a quick scan and seen the alarms and slide bolts. I wanted to just run right out of there the hell with the alarms, but I didn’t.

I JOG UP TO THE FRONT of the stores seeing Highway 90 across the massive parking lot and another McDonalds across the street. I get up to the front register; it too is pulled open with the drawers empty. I bend down just as a black and white City of Ocean Springs Police Department on routine patrol shining his light into the stores. Fuck me, I look over to my left and there’s that rope hanging right there next to the giant ladder, but they kept going and I seen them pull into traffic a few minutes later. I wanted to get on that rope and the hell out of there but seeing that cop go by told me I had another hour, slow down. I walk normally to the back in case someone does see me looking for the Mangers Office and there it is, right behind the Pharmacists window. I walked right into a completely dark room and turn on the light and sitting right by the door laying down on a file cabinet are two fat bank bags from a local bank. Grabbed the bags, hit the lights and headed for my rope. I tied the bag onto the bottom of the rope, flung the bank bags up onto the roof and crawled hand over fist up about 10-12 feet to the daylight and fresh air. I have burglarized hundreds of buildings and homes and this one was not only rewarding, my first pharmacy burglary, but hell of hard and exciting at the same time…

I was too hyped up to drive back to New Orleans so I had rented a room next to the interstate about 15 miles away. I dumped the entire contents into one of the large beds, grabbed the K-4’s (Dilaudids), broke the seal on a little tiny saccharin bottle with exactly 100 pills in it, worth exactly $5,000 if I sell them one by one, and stated crushing hem up in a hotel book of matches. Busted open a party pack of U-100’s syringes, dumped the now crushed up pill into the syringe, scoop up a little warm water from the sink and cold shake for a minute. You have to be standing up to get the full bang in the knees of this stuff. Elvis is reported to have said, “Son, I have done’em all and Dilaudid is the best!” I think he is right (I think they did something to them and you can’t shoot them anymore). To me it is a warm, fuzzy sensation from head to toe concentrating right in the center of your sexuality, and then easing down and into the best pussy you ever had, warm and sensuous and inviting and whispering all the right….

I laid right on top of all them pills on the big double bed, the air conditioning blasting I could hear the faint sounds of Jake Brakes on the interstate as the big trucks exited to fast…. I sliced one of the bank bags open and it was full of checks and paper work. The second bag even bigger contained $3,45o cash and a deposit slip. I tried to remove as much of the identifying marks from the bottles, collected everything and walked it to the dumpster. I wanted to get going after a quick shower but my instincts told me to sit tight. I wanted to pull out of here in about 45 minutes into rush hour traffic and blend in on the interstate over to Biloxi to my apartment on the beach and then to New Orleans where a handful of trusted people awaited good news. I had been over here once before to rob it but had a premonition about dusk to dawn drug store burglaries. I always chose them hours because people eyes are changing and they are more forgiving of what they think they saw and…

It wasn’t even 6:30 in the morning and I was soaking wet with perspiration, it’s like living in a jungle down there. I knew I had to bury most of this stuff and then only tell a person or two and then I had to keep moving, every few hours everywhere I went I would blow up to nonstop traffic and it was on to the next spot, way the fuck on the other side of town, way out in Slidell, the 16^th floor of the Marriott in Downtown New Orleans they just kept coming; when you got fresh pharmaceuticals’ dope fiends will find you.

I GOT RUN OFF FROM one of my girlfriends’ houses when people started showing up at 3:30 in the morning with $40 and Ten Dollar Food Stamps. As soon as the traffic gets back to back it’s time to go… I am freaking terrified of getting killed for this much drugs. Even the people directly around me can’t see all this. After all the Methadone, Desoxyn (the best legal speed), 5 and 15 mg., I realized probably $25,000 cash. I sold everything but the Dilaudid and the cough syrup and had a Habit From Hell when I got caught red-handed right inside Tony’s Discount Drugs by them patrolling city cops after a tripped an alarm under the pharmacist counter.

Turning off Historic Highway 49 from Memphis to the foot of the Gulf of Mexico you immediately cross a set of railroad tracks and under a big oval sign over a guard shack that say’s MISSISSIPPI STATE PRISON AT PARCHMAN. I was in a van full of felons from various detention centers throughout the Great State of Mississippi and we never even slowed for the guard standing outside the shack looking at us with a look of “You poor bastards!” That’s exactly what it felt like to except I actually felt quite lucky. In another time or another place three years for getting caught red handed during a drug store robbery? As soon as we got to Building 10 right inside the gate to the right was the Reception Center right out of the Thirties. They were building a brand new huge new Receiving and Delivery and temporary housing somewhere on its 50,000 acres of sugarcane prooperty; Flat delta as far away as you could see. If you took off running they’d let you go and then go out there and get you after you wore yourself out real good. Elvis Presley’s father may have been the very same bunk I was assigned, because he too did three years there in the 30’s for kiting checks. Wherever they have stupid people they have check kiters because right next to tearing the tag of your mattress or sniffing bicycle seats at the elementary school, it remains the lamest crime on the books.

I immediately sent out typed resumes to all the top departments and got a job in the hospital pharmacy. My Judgment and Commitment Order said Burglary 3^rd. When they asked me what I burglarized I told it was a shoe store. I was sent straight to a Trustee camp and right behind my desk was three large boxes slap full of prescription pills that had been returned to the pharmacy from any inmate who left or for whatever reason. I could just dip my hand down in any of the boxes like a cookie jar and come out with anything and sell it. Most of them dummies wanted Thorazine, Stelazine, stuff that will knock off three weeks of your sentence with a cup water. You will sleep day and night and be zoned like a zombie for weeks… I fucked them out of many a day in the county jail knocked out on that shit. I’d trade my food for it and just sleep 20 hours a day, get up and exercise, take a shower, eat some fruit and back to the drawing board….

Right at the Mississippi –Louisiana state line is a big rest area at the Stennis Air Space Engineering exit. Finding a quite, secluded parking spot way in the back I grab a back pack and a small Boy Scout shovel and trot off into the woods. As soon as I get at the perimeter I stand there and take a piss for a good long time to see who is zooming who… anyway, it is a good place to stash stuff for a few weeks…

Burley Dahl Disabled Senior

2011-09-14T12:36:00.001-07:00

(I sent this to all the top state officials in elder abuse)

Greetings;

Without causing attention to Burley because he doesn't want them to know he is complaining (although he is sitting right by his phone at Stewart Homes if you need to verify this only 449-7229 Burley Dahl). Three times in the last year he has been invited to various and today's P.A.C.T. PICNIC, September 14, Clark's Bay at 11:30 Am, Food, Games, FUN WILL BE HAD BY ALL RIDES AVAILABLE, PLEASE CALL 495-8545 TO LET US KNOW IF YOU ARE ATTENDING OR NEED A RIDE.

Three times that I know of personally despite repeated confirmation they never come get him. It breaks my heart because I offer to take him and he says "If they don't come get me they don't want me to come."

How many other old disabled people waited all week for this, I got him new pants and shirt at Good Samaritan and a haircut. Meanwhile the P.A.C.T. employees will be paid to drive out to the lake, sit around and eat food paid for by the State enjoy a wonderful day by the lake and get paid an average $15 an hour. They did the same thing last Thanksgiving and Christmas and it makes me sick seeing him sit here feeling like they don't want him around. He called several times to attend and again this morning at 10 AM to verify someone would pick him up and they still left him behind.

I implore you sir please see that this doesn't happen again without using Burley as the centerpiece of change; you call him to verify this but he is afraid they will totally neglect him if he is heard to complain...

Mark Anthony Given

Helena, Montana 59601

Following day follow up: Burley will not he heard to complain about his Case Manager Erica Jenkins, had she known she would have personally delivered Burley to the Picnic...

Helena As The Capital City 1883 Pamphlet I Found at Thrift Store

2011-07-11T13:24:00.000-07:00

Check out the political pamphlet from shortly before 1874 entitled "Helena as the Capital City" consisting of sixteen (16) pages and is un authored.

It is very detailed and well written against "Marcus Dailey's smelter town,” This is the last paragraph:

Anaconda alone of all the towns receiving large votes at the election of 1892, cannot be regarded as a fit candidate, situated as it is far towards the Idaho boundary in one direction as a town could possibly be built, living on a single industry and dominated by the autocratic will of the manager of a rich corporation. On the real question at issue, whether the capital of Montana shall belong to the people of Montana or to Marcus Daly, Helena asks the intelligent verdict of the patriotic and incorruptible voters of the State.

__________________________________

State Publishing Co., Print, Helena.

__________________________________

I found it in a local thrift store in the enclosure shown that may well be very old too, with the other things seen the photograph. I intend to place them on eBay and because I am only a few blocks from the Montana Historical Society here in Helena, Montana, I wanted to give you an exclusive first look. It is all for sale part and parcel.

Time is of the essence, this unsolicited offer expires on July 21, 2011.

Cop on the Compound, By Mark Anthony Given copyright 2010

2011-04-20T09:31:00.002-07:00

Cop On the Compound

http://www.nytimes.com/1994/07/12/us/convicted-police-officer-receives-a-sentence-of-at-least-11-years.html

I KNEW THIS GUY MICHAEL DOWD AT FCI Marianna in Florida. I got to give it to him, he didn't PC "Protective custody," he walked around the compound like the rest of us. They took a lot of money out of his house when he was arrested. When the state courts handed him over to the feds, the state kept the money. When I met him in the law library at FCI Marianna, Florida he wanted my help with post conviction matters, ie. USC 2255 having lost all his appeals. I think he appealed a USSG sentencing guideline matter because he plead guilty, I don't remember. Anyway, I looked over his stuff and asked where that money went. He said he didn’t know could I get it back for him? It was maybe thirty-thousand dollars, I forget. I whipped up a generic Petition for Remission modeled after the Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure with the same name, claiming the criminal matter was over and the money was never properly forfeited. The State either never responded (they're favorite response) or conceded. Mike had me draw up a little one-time Power of Attorney for his brother to receive the money and the next thing I know (a week later) I got rolled up and put in the SHU "special housing unit" commonly known as the "Hole."

ON THE WAY TO THE HOLE I either seen Mike or someone told me they rolled him up too or I seen him across the hall, again I forget, this was in the late 90's. What do I tell them? What do I do? "Tell them the truth, just like it happened, we haven’t done anything wrong" I instructed him. I left federal prison after doing nearly 12 years on a 10 year sentence for bank fraud with nearly ten-thousand dollars in my account but I never "charged" anyone anything. That is extremely frowned upon and will get you thrown in the "Hole."

THE NEXT MORNING THEY TOOK ME in front of a high ranking hack and a Disciplinary Committee. Nothing like any state joint, the fed's treat you humane. "Mr. Given, the mail room brought to our attention that you and inmate Michael Dowd both received checks from the same individual; yours for $5,000 and his for $10,000. Do you want to tell us why this is? We know you do legal work and want to know is that what this is?" "Yes sir, that's exactly what that this is, but that is not a fee. I never charged Michael Dowd or anyone for legal work. This is what happened. Captain, I been down nearly twelve years on a ten year sentence. I violated parole twice for smoking pot. I'm not a jailhouse lawyer and I been here nearly two-years and you haven't heard of me charging anybody anything. I know I can't charge anyone. I'm a paralegal. I set in a classroom for three years at night while holding down a full time job for a two-year degree. Mike asked me to look at his stuff and because of the notoriety of his case (I'd seen him on 60 Minutes and he was sitting right next to me in the TV Room!) I was curious. Come to find out, when the state handed him over to the feds, they forgot the money he was seized with. I showed him how to file a Petition for Remission in state court and they gave it back to him. I never charged him anything but if I got you $30,000 back, wouldn’t you want to do something for me?" He leaned back in his chair and scratched his head...... "Let me speak to Mr. Dowd and if that's what happened you'll be out of here today....He let us both out of the hole that day and I had to go back to a army cot on the floor while I waited for a cell in my Unit. 4:07 PM 10/31/2010 That is where I was approached by the next character in this brilliant saga..

Posted by Mark Anthony Given a/k/a The King of Montana at 3:35 PM

SPLIT DEPOSIT: King Rat Meets Cool Hand Luke, Chapter 3

2011-04-18T09:50:00.000-07:00

I just changed that part about wanting half of the copy hustle. I gave it all to him and told him in front of everybody “just don’t wreck us,” which blowed everybody away because it could be a couple hundred dollars a month. I never cared about money. I’d much rather do something for you and charge you nothing and have you talk good about me. And besides, I knew that just the prestige of the job alone was worth more than a couple of hundred bucks to me, and besides, he was leaving in a month or so. It’s a rare talent to turn your adversaries into agreeing with you. I always paid someone an “ice cream,” probably almost $2 per bag to carry my bags to my cell when I was on the yard; usually friends of mine who didn’t have a pot to piss in and it would be the only ice cream they got until I shopped again. In the joint everything natters, everything means something, has some significance you can barter. I wanted to be under the radar every chance I got. FCI Seagoville had been there a long time and used to be a Japanese internment camp, a women’s prison, a whole list of things, mental hospital, hospital and was laid out in a giant oval of manicured yards and of all the joints I been in, this place looked like a college campus for criminals. Slap full of rats, and devious individuals, even people doing time under different identities. Like FCI Texarka in and FCI Marianna in Florida, both of which conncted to a small airport you would see people coming and going in black hooded concealment attire and you would never know who that was. I loved all the “Big Government” feel to everything where they never ran out of anything and everything worked and inmates wore real Dickies clothing that lasted years and looked real cool at about seven or eight years. This joint was a long way from Lewisburg in the hole where I started. This is where I began to systematically examine every case from L.Ed.2. 1 which began in the mid 50’s right up until the early 70’s. What has been described as the heydays for habeas law. All landmark decisions, Miranda v. Arizona, Mapp v. Ohio, Fay v. Noia, Sanders v. US, Stanford v. Texas, right up to Franks v. Delaware, Brady v. Maryland in criminal law. My all time favorite wasn’t a criminal matter, 407 U.S. 258 (1972), Flood v. Kuhn et al., about baseball free agency. I later read the justices drew straws to write the opinion for the court. Justice Blackmun laid out the colorful history of baseball and sited dozens of screwy names, Three-Finger Brown, Smokey Joe Wood, Wee Willie Keeler, Iron Man McGinnity. I always told guys if you want to write great legal writing, read great legal writing. You see how the masters do it and how it is supposed to be done, follow their format; you haven’t got to reinvent the wheel here.

I STARTED READING EVERY BOOK I COULD FIND on blackjack and betting. Structured betting is what George is system is called and there is a new betting system guaranteed to win published every week or so nowadays. All the books had the same thing in common, the followed Beat The Dealer playing strategy with minor variations and they all had structured betting. And a lot of things work wonders on paper but don’t work at all in the real world. As I spent months and months playing blackjack and reading Supreme Court cases, I wasn’t whoring the law as most would do in such a situation and the Law Library ran itself. Just like I did in every joint I ever been in, I have no contact with the brass who all stand like beacons of hope in the chow hall at noon in every joint I ever been in. In theory they are there to address the inmate population as a whole that they have an open door policy. Very few inmates I knew wanted to be seen talking to brass. I made it a point of avoiding all of it by eating in my cell. Feds got smoked oysters in the Commissary, summer sausage, and fresh garlic and fruit, rice, and there’s always the Kitchen Man bringing around anything you wanted. I might go to the chow hall five or six times a year; usually on Jamaican Day or Cuban Day or Dominican Day where they get to make stuff you wouldn’t otherwise ever see.

GEORGE’S BETTING FORMULA MADE ME THINK of when I was 20 years old stuck on an oil rig in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico as a roughneck finishing my two week hitch but we couldn’t get in because of the fog. I remember asking the helicopter mechanic they kept stationed on the rig if, under the worst scenario like the pilot drops dead could you fly us back in? We were 150 miles in the Gulf of Mexico and the weather changes every 15 minutes in the middle of the summer, but we had been stalled 3 days after my hitch and I wanted off that thing. He told me under no circumstances could he fly us anywhere. I said let me get this straight, you can make the thing fly but you can’t fly it? “That’s what I’m telling you.” I had a hard time wrapping my head around that… But that is what I was afraid of, the thing would work great on paper and fail in real life action. So after several months of practicing we busted out the real chips and started playing, and it still kept working.

One of the best guys I ever met was in Seagoville, Texas FCI just south of Dallas-Ft.Worth, his name was Jimmy “JC” Helms and he looked a spitting image of me. Same height, hair cut, age, you name it except Jimmy self-surrendered to a 23 year prison sentence…. He too had pleaded out to a CCE 848 case or Continued Criminal Enterprise who supervised five or more and made a lot of money. Jimmy was hauling truck loads of pot from south of the border to Dallas then to the East Coast. He had some helluva novel argument based on Rutledge v. US which I don’t remember now. Once you plead guilty in federal court I can count on one hand the number of successful challenges to an otherwise valid plea in the United States Supreme Court law, which is all I focused on. Every state court, county court, state supreme court, federal district court, us court of appeals, they all bow down to the United States Supreme Court and if you know the case better than they do, and it support your set of facts, you won. The reason I won so many cases? I only involved myself with cases I knew I could win if I get in front of the right judge. Somewhere down the line the court will follow the US Supreme Court law of the land. You give back a guilty plea you have done something. I actually gave one back now that I think of it. The judge read the guy a statute at his change of plea hearing that only provided for a 10 year sentence but was sentenced to 20. He had been down 8-9 years and when they had to retry him some of the case agents had retired, files had been sent into government storage which they will tell you takes months to retrieve anything it’s buried so deep. They offered him time served and he went home. That’s why even jailhouse lawyers were standing in line to see me every were I went, that and I had a captive audience. Over and over again people would bring me people looking to hire someone and want a finder’s fee. You couldn’t trust anybody in there, I turned them all down. I’ve seen many guys never win an informa pauperis application and I don’t want to make light of the difficulty of the law. In my experience lots of people have viable claims but do not know how to present them, how to format them or even articulate them. But you learn early on you can’t save the world…

I got sentenced to five years confinement with the United States Bureau Prisons to be followed by five years of supervised probation for violation of 18 USC 3536 Bank Fraud. I plead to two counts and four counts were dismissed as part of a plea agreement but the cantankerous on judge ordered restitution on all six counts. When I walked out of the court room I told the dumpster attorney that “He can’t do that, order restitution to counts dismissed.” I don’t know how I knew that but I did. “I know,” the lawyer said, “but if I go tell him that he’s liable to give you the max.” He was probably right. First fat library I got too after a little digging sure enough Hughey v. United States, 495 U. S. 411 (1990). Dude was caught with 84 different credit cards in five different identification and they did they same thing to him; ordered restitution to counts dismissed. Held: A VWPA restitution award is authorized only for the loss caused by the specific conduct that is the basis of the offense of conviction. @Pp. 495 U. S. 415-422. A copy of United States Supreme Court’s decision attached thereto I fucked them out of a couple million dollars with the swipe of the pen. The US Attorney’s Office conceded and joined the motion. I told them when I swiped all that money I didn’t plan on paying it back.

MY BUDDY JIMMY WAS HOUNDING ME day and night to show him “The System” as it came to be known. I told him if everybody knows how to do it, it won’t work no more and my other buddy George didn’t like JC or anybody for that matter. I seen him get pulled off a young Mexican foaming at the mouth he has so angry in the TV Room one morning. Oh, what an uproar this thing caused; mainly because of my unbridled enthusiasm for it with anybody I came in contact with. I thought I had discovered the modern day Holy Grail or dusted off a C.M. Russell original work of art in my dead grandfather’s attic. I couldn’t shut up about it and George was concerned. I’d show anybody just like I showed you and after they tried it or whatever the next question was “Well what if you lose the 4^th bet or the 5^th bet? There’s the rub again…..I’d tell them it’s something similar to Fermat’s Last Theorem and if you knew this calculation you always know what the next bet it, and just as important as making the right play, you have to make the right bet. When I first did it in the casinos I had been practicing in my cell for 14 months nonstop, I had this thing down to a science before I ever set down at a live table…

EVERY PRO BLACKJACK PLAYER PLAYS at least two hands at once, it just doubles everything and it isn’t any harder. Ideally I want to be at the $25 blackjack table for 20 minutes at 4 o’clock in the morning and be in and out with a grand or so in less time than that. I’ll never rget the ook on the faces of several Pit Bosses huddled together covering their mouths I couldn’t read their lips. When this think is working on all fours it should be win one, lose one, 25$ bet lost bet $50 win. I got my $25 back and made $25. After less than 10 minutes I’m up $700 and still making the same bet! They are pulling their hair out because they never seen this. Every five minutes I get interrupted to be offered a “Players Card” or “dinner for you and a guest”, on and on they want me in their system to monitor what the hell I’m doing. I got the same story for them every time; I’m on my way to the airport, I’ll see you next time….”4/18/2011 10:43:34 AM They never seen a grown man and $1,000 dress suit mix all his different chips together in a pile and keep playing with them like a kindergarten child. I do that so they can’t keep a running count of how bad I’m spanking their ass seaming at will. If I am the only one at the table they can look at the dealer’s bank and get a exact count. Every two or three minutes you will see me pocket a few big denomination chips. Drinking bottled water or hot chocolate and no smoking I could blend in to woodwork if I wasn’t walking out of there with there money. Nine hands and right at the eight minute mark the dealer gets a tap on the shoulder and they switch dealers to right the rhythm in the casinos favor. It doesn’t work against guys like me. Hand 17 they switch the dealer again and it’s some old hippy hangover from the seventies with hippy beads and tie die shit. Everytime she scoops up the cards for no apparent reason shw will reach over and tap the table to signal a new hand. Her mojo dosent work either even after 6 straight loses I bet 7, 8, 7 and recouped every dime not counting the double down on the second 7 bet.

THAT’S WHEN THEY BRING OUT THE MECHANIC, usually a real lucky Irishman like myself but you can usually tell the Mechanic because he has thirty or forty grand of jewels trying to blind me with his bling. I can beat him but twenty five hands is my limit because my concentration starts to fail, I’m up almost a grand. “Color me up.” That’s my mantra….the dealer takes his time because the last thing they want is for me to leave but I know you haven’t won a dime until you make it to the parking lot. I never even stop at the Tellers cage to cash in the chips, there’s no hurry there always open I mosey out of there just in time to see a Supervisor step off the elevator 50 feet away with a couple of minions heading straight at me. They look at me like a lab specimen as I walk by and act like I never even notice them. Straight thru the front door past valet parking and head straight out into the fresh air with a slight smile on my face as I walk like I know where I am going but I’m just trying to shake the adrenalin rush off like a small line of coke without the jitters…

Split Deposit: King Rat Meets Cool Hand Luke Chapter Two

2011-04-17T09:57:00.000-07:00

Split Deposit: King Rat Meets Cool Hand Luke Chapter Two

4/17/2011 10:46 AM

I JUST CHANGED THAT PART ABOUT wanting half of the copy hustle. I gave it all to him and told him in front of everybody “just don’t wreck us,” which blowed everybody away because it could be a couple hundred dollars a month. I never cared about money. I’d much rather do something for you and charge you nothing and have you talk good about me. And besides, I knew that just the prestige of the job alone was worth more than a couple of hundred bucks to me, and besides, he was leaving in a month or so. It’s a rare talent to turn your adversaries into agreeing with you. I always paid someone an “ice cream,” probably almost $2 per bag to carry my bags to my cell when I was on the yard; usually friends of mine who didn’t have a pot to piss in and it would be the only ice cream they got until I shopped again. In the joint everything natters, everything means something, has some significance you can barter. I wanted to be under the radar every chance I got. FCI Seagoville had been there a long time and used to be a Japanese internment camp, a women’s prison, a whole list of things, mental hospital, hospital and was laid out in a giant oval of manicured yards and of all the joints I been in, this place looked like a college campus for criminals. Slap full of rats, and devious individuals, even people doing time under different identities. Like FCI Texarka in and FCI Marianna in Florida, both of which conncted to a small airport you would see people coming and going in black hooded concealment attire and you would never know who that was. I loved all the “Big Government” feel to everything where they never ran out of anything and everything worked and inmates wore real Dickies clothing that lasted years and looked real cool at about seven or eight years. This joint was a long way from Lewisburg in the hole where I started. This is where I began to systematically examine every case from L.Ed.2. 1 which began in the mid 50’s right up until the early 70’s. What has been described as the heydays for habeas law. All landmark decisions, Miranda v. Arizona, Mapp v. Ohio, Fay v. Noia, Sanders v. US, Stanford v. Texas, right up to Franks v. Delaware, Brady v. Maryland in criminal law. My all time favorite wasn’t a criminal matter, 407 U.S. 258 (1972), Flood v. Kuhn et al., about baseball free agency. I later read the justices drew straws to write the opinion for the court. Justice Blackmun laid out the colorful history of baseball and sited dozens of screwy names, Three-Finger Brown, Smokey Joe Wood, Wee Willie Keeler, Iron Man McGinnity. I always told guys if you want to write great legal writing, read great legal writing. You see how the masters do it and how it is supposed to be done, follow their format; you haven’t got to reinvent the wheel here.

ONE OF THE BEST GUYS I EVER MET was in Seagoville, Texas FCI just south of Dallas-Ft.Worth, his name was Jimmy “JC” Helms and he looked a spitting image of me. Same height, hair cut, age, you name it except Jimmy self-surrendered to a 23 year prison sentence…. He too had pleaded out to a CCE 848 case or Continued Criminal Enterprise who supervised five or more and made a lot of money. Jimmy was hauling truck loads of pot from south of the border to Dallas then to the East Coast. He had some helluva novel argument based on Rutledge v. US which I don’t remember now. Once you plead guilty in federal court I can count on one hand the number of successful challenges to an otherwise valid plea in the United States Supreme Court law, which is all I focused on. Every state court, county court, state supreme court, federal district court, us court of appeals, they all bow down to the United States Supreme Court and if you know the case better than they do, and it support your set of facts, you won. The reason I won so many cases? I only involved myself with cases I knew I could win if I get in front of the right judge. Somewhere down the line the court will follow the US Supreme Court law of the land. You give back a guilty plea you have done something. I actually gave one back now that I think of it. The judge read the guy a statute at his change of plea hearing that only provided for a 10 year sentence but was sentenced to 20. He had been down 8-9 years and when they had to retry him some of the case agents had retired, files had been sent into government storage which they will tell you takes months to retrieve anything it’s buried so deep. They offered him time served and he went home. That’s why even jailhouse lawyers were standing in line to see me every were I went, that and I had a captive audience. Over and over again people would bring me people looking to hire someone and want a finder’s fee. You couldn’t trust anybody in there, I turned them all down. I’ve seen many guys never win an informa pauperis application and I don’t want to make light of the difficulty of the law. In my experience lots of people have viable claims but do not know how to present them, how to format them or even articulate them. But you learn early on you can’t save the world…

I GOT SENTENCED TO FIVE YEARS CONFINEMENT with the United States Bureau Prisons to be followed by five years of supervised probation for violation of 18 USC 3536 Bank Fraud. I plead to two counts and four counts were dismissed as part of a plea agreement but the cantankerous on judge ordered restitution on all six counts. When I walked out of the court room I told the dumpster attorney that “He can’t do that, order restitution to counts dismissed.” I don’t know how I knew that but I did. “I know,” the lawyer said, “but if I go tell him that he’s liable to give you the max.” He was probably right. First fat library I got too after a little digging sure enough Hughey v. United States, 495 U. S. 411 (1990). Dude was caught with 84 different credit cards in five different identification and they did they same thing to him; ordered restitution to counts dismissed. Held: A VWPA restitution award is authorized only for the loss caused by the specific conduct that is the basis of the offense of conviction. @Pp. 495 U. S. 415-422. A copy of United States Supreme Court’s decision attached thereto I fucked them out of a couple million dollars with the swipe of the pen. The US Attorney’s Office conceded and joined the motion. I told them when I swiped all that money I didn’t plan on paying it back.

Split Deposit: King Rat Meets Cool Hand Luke Chapter Two

2010-09-03T17:57:00.002-07:00

(Disclaimer: I Know this is all over the place for 2nd draft. Need Editor and a Agent)

SPLIT DEPOSIT: King Rat Meets Cool Hand Luke

By Mark Anthony Given Copyright 2010 3:16 PM
9/3/2010 Chapter Two

      I had a guy come see me in the law libray at FCI Seagoville, Texas where I was placed in charge of a half dozen guys, right off the bus beacause I was back on a parole violation for smoking pot and I had a law degree. Actally I ad two year AA Degree from a fly by night College on the Gulf Coast that continued to take out loans in my name for a year and a half after I graduated then foldded it's dozen campuses. It took me three years of night school for a two year degree working at a seafood food joint and trying to beat urynaysis test from my parole officer. Half a dozen guys who proved that a little knowledge is dangerous routinely and another dozen guys who would love to have their job's. I hand picked people who werent trying to whore the law by charging guys $1,000 to prepare badly articulated legal documents. I knew a long haired jailhouse lawyer in there pulled down 10k a year hawking his "Jackpot Motion." That's what he told me. In law it would have been called a Rodriquez Motion where at the time of sentence the judge forgot to ask you if you had anything to say. Guranteed resentencing at the time and probably still valid. Short and sweet (anything under 7 pages) case where a federal prisoner reached the US Supreme Court and the High Court reasoned that while it was exceedingly unlikely, their existed a ever so slight chance that something may come out of your mouth to turn the whole case on it's ear....right of allocution it's called.
      Getting resentenced might not sound all that releiveing, but the One Book Rule I think it is requires that you be sentenced by the current book, and under the USSG constantly changing, and most not retroactive, just getting back in front of a judge after many years can open a lot of doors. Opens the door for more mistake, gets you a few weeks of disesel therapy to and from court on the other side of the country...
     Nine out of ten people who came to me had plead guilty so I didnt have weeks of transcripts to mine. A twenty minute guilty plea hearing and a 30 minute sentencing hearing. At a page a minute I can tell you before dinner if you got a winning case. I'd open the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure Rule 11 governing Guilty Pleas in Federal Court which are duplicated or Codified in State Courts. I'd start reading and check off the the 5-6 requirements. Same as the sentencing hearing, theres a whole format they follow an when they fall of the path, I might can get you back in court. I met guys would have loved to go back where they came from and spend months in the local jail just to be close to their family...get the very same sentence... After I knew every single section and subsection it occurred to me that virtually every single requirement is mandated by a US Supreme Court precedent. And if you have read that case a half-dozen times and researched it top to bottom when you get infront of a judge, any judge, you tell them what the law is....politely of course. When I do tackle a trial transcript I start at the Jury Instruction, nearly the end of the trial. One wrong word, One word out of place get your entire conviction vacated, meaning it not only is the conviction resersed and your innocent again, it is as if it never occurred! Gotta love that.
      At the very end of the trial once again there is a whole set of mandatory jury instructions, you don't have to prove your innocence, you dont have to testify, the indictment is not evidence is against you, again another handfull of mandatory instructions when deciding a fellowmans fate. "Ladies and gentelman, if the government has failed to meet it's burnden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt you should acquit." Right there that one word, "should". There is no should about it. It's not like well if you want to or you can but you don't have too. If the government fails to meet it's burden of proof you "must" acquit. 69 f.3d something. Believe it or not as the case explains that one word effects the very structure of the trial itself requireing outright reversal in habeas or direct appeal, and it is the first place I look for guys who have no other option... that should be the damn "Jackpot Motion" right there... it is actually in the current montana pattern jury instruction and no one has caught it.none of which knew Mapp from Ohio . (Inside joke). This old geezer brought me one of the dozen or so very interesting cases I which required me to take no other cases unless something came in the door time sensisitive. His name was George Kosko out of Roanoake Virginia. Former private pilot for George Jones, professional golfer, nightclub owner and bookmaker. When I met him he was doing 20 year for RICO and conspiracy to distibute couple 100 keys. He's the only guy I ever met who negotiated his surrender to the Chief Federal District court Judge on the tarmac! He was 63 and looked like he stepped out of the page to Ralph Lauren add with complete white full hair and tanned like a walnut. Walked the track all days eating oranges and calculating his return to the casino's where he had devised a betting system that beat any fast moving game with a near fifty-percent chance of winning against a betting formula that required he win one of every three. Pure mathematic's and virtually unstoppable.
      But to get to me, he had to get past Terry. Terry had a square jaw like Sargent Slaughter stood 6'6 was a former USMC Sniper and doing 25 years for bank fraud after his wife started dippin in the dieing Aunt's probate....He wouldnt let anyone look at his stuff but he brought me drafts to correct of motions needing immedieate response. Half the law libray was tables typewriters and chairs and you had to go to a half door and ask for the particular book you wanted. This is where Terry stationed himself when I was holding court. I sat in the next biggest chair and bank presidents desk handed down from the wardens office overlooking the entire compund and the chow hall on the left and my building on the right. I had a Mexican cleaning my room and doing my laundy, pressing the clothes for $75 a month. I paid another little Mexican who sat on on the second story floor down the hall from my cell $25 dollars a month to watch my cell 24-7 for anything I needed to know about, and run next door and tell me if necessary.
     George owned a handfull of bars strip jonts and restaurant in and around Roanoke. He told me he would drop by each of the places once a week for the reeipts and drop off a ounce of coke to particular bartenders and managers and would have plead guilty to that he just didnt think he conspired with anybody and he jumped bond in his Cessana President flew to Mexico spent all his money an turned himself in. The Chief US District Court Judge appointed his former law clerk his first case on the tarmac to represent George and informed him his trial started Monday morning. This was late Friday afternoon.
      That ineffective assistance of counsel claim for failure to prepaire and investigate I thought was a "dead bang winner" which is a legal term in light of the famous Powell v. Alabama case of the train load of black men charged with raping a young white girl. No lawyer would represent them so the court assigned lawyers for them and began the trial poste haste, meaning immediately.... I spent weeks just reading the three week trial transcript. At the end of he first week of trial all his codefendants stood up and plead guilty and sit on the otherside of the court room. As much as I wanted to help him because I wanted the keys to the Kingdom he was offering me with this betting formula, which I immeditaely seen arbitrage applications for, I knew and I told him and dozens other: this aint civil law where you show the damages we slipt the money and everybody goes home happy. It's been said that bad cases make good law? Well there exist a bad case called Strickland v. washington a death penalty case out of Northern Forida where Mr. washington, Strickand was the warden of Florida State Prison at Rayford, went a crime spree raping an killing people. His lawyer claimed he got dropped on his head and had a horrendous child hood and the jury should spare the death penalty. But he forgot to introduce the Hospital records and a hole list of other done me wrongs. The US Supreme Court nailed the coffin on tens of thousands of cases by using this case to put an end to all and future ineffective assistnace of counsel claims by requireing a two prong test. You have to show that not only did the lawyer mess up, which is often hard enough, you then have to demonstarte that the out come would have been different. Theres the rub. Essentially the court held that yeah he messed up but even if he had introduced the hospital records or called a certain witness.....he stilled killed all them people and it wouldnt have made a difference....
      When I told George all that and had him read the cse himself a few times but he had been through nearly 10 years of direct appeal and felt after watching me for months that I was the only guy he would ever let look at his case. It's in the law books, US v. Kosko, 770 F.3d. 1238 (3rd Cir. 1988), but he was wanted to invoke a rare exception to the second prong by claiming cummulative error. Thats a doctrine in law that says that cummulative effect of a number of errors renders the outcome useless or something like that, or that the errors effected the "structural integerity" where the jury was read the wrong jury instruction an the lawyer didnt object....the first concept of American jurisprudence is that there is always an an exception in law....
   Allthough George's betting formula worked well at Roullette and Baccarrat, Blackjack was and is the one game in the casino you can consistently win or lose... and before he would teach it to me, I had to learn professioonal Blackjack. Conveniently enough, he had a chart from Beat The dealer that shows all the dealers hands running accross the top compare with the players hand and where the intersect on the chart says Hit, Stand, Douple or Split. You could teach it to a six year old....The thing is you have to play enough times to where you dont have to look at the chart anymore and you start playing like a machine. No emotion, hit, stand, spilt or double it's like to calculators playing against each other and any one hand dosent matter....I only have to win the of every ten hands and with a near 50/50 game, that when I firsy started doing at the casinos on the Gulf coast it become like driving over to the ATM machine several times a week. I am not kiding you, I believed then and believe now he invented either a new mathematical theorem or this has been around for ever and I just never hard of it
   George only had a couple years on his sentence and had been down nearly 15 years having started at the worst Penitentiary's making it to Seagoville which was the crown jewell of the BOP if you ask me. It was a freaking layout as far as I was concerned. 4:52 PM 9/3/2010 He explained to me his book making opeation as we walked around the track or practiced blackjack day and knghit. I could see how he came up with this betting formula because he had numbers running in his head contantly. The first time he showed me the mathematics of the thing it was so basically simple you wondered why anyone in the right mind who gambles dosent do this. Watch, I am going to make five bets loose three and win two but make money. First bet $1 lost, 2nd bet $2 lost, third bet $3 lost, fourth bet $4 win, fifth bet #3 win. Do the math. I can lose the first seven bets, win the last three and still make money. How can the casino win twice as many hands as me but I still make money? I'm telling you this guy should be a Nobel Laurate! He told me he was going to turn a "tooth pick into a lumber yard!"(2220 words). 6:33 PM 9/3/2010

Spilt Deposit: King Rat Meets Cool Hand Luke Chapter One

2010-09-02T13:25:00.001-07:00

                                   SPLIT DEPOSIT: King Rat Meets Cool Hand Luke
                                   Copyright 2010 Mark Anthony Given
FIRST DRAFT                                                                                                   SUMMER 2010
                                                       CHAPTER  ONE

     I did 10 years in federal prison for bank fraud in the late 80's - '90's after my girlfriend in New Orleans who was a former bank teller got me involved in a brilliant "spilt deposit' scheme. The government said I defrauding some 75 banks out of a couple million dollars with a 19 cent Bic pen and a set of balls of steel. While in prison I decided if I learn something everyday, I haven't lost that day; indeed, I could turn this otherwise negative situation into something positive. First I sought to conquer American literature by reading Steinbeck, Hemingway, Faulkner, Walker Percy, Fitzgerald, on an on. Then I started on Russian literature by reading Dostevsky, Tolstoy, then Nabakov, Somerset Maughn, Taylor Caldwel....hundreds of books an classics.
     Then I read a death penalty ineffective assistance of counsel case where they placed the lawyer on the stand and in his testimony related that he had only read a handfull of cases in all his years in law school. I said to myself, "you know what? If I read even 10 or 20 cases I will know more about this area of law than most lawyers.
     I began at 1 L.Ed.2. 1 (Lawyers Edition), which is the second series of US Supreme Court cases begining in 1956 or 57 and read 125 volumes of United States Supreme Court cases without stopping. After about three months I could physically feel my brain expanding as I slept (soft cracklin feeling) as I began to think about things that would never occur to you. I'm not kid'n. Caveat, I only read criminal, patent, intelectual rights, slander and libel; actually it would be easier to tell you what I didn't read: New Mexico v. Arizona (either water rights or gerrymandering (voting district disputes), and that's it. Took me 3-4 years. Remember them light poles in peoples living rooms in the 60's an '70's? A stand up pole you could compress and it would stand where ever you placed it with 3-4 lamps extending off it? That was a major patent dispute. Intermitent windshield wipers? Years in litigation the Supreme Court resolved.
      One of the earliest cases comes to mind Bartkus v. Illinois, this poor bastard was tried and acquitted of bank robbery in federal court and three weeks later tried and convicted in state court of the very same offense using the very same evidence..... As you might expect there is a lot of standing around waiting in chow lines, controlled movement lines and lots of time period;   I'd photocopy the cases and every opportuinty I'd pull it out and read the same case four or five times. The first self help book I read said that successful people have no more hours in the day than I do and we are all on a level playing field and if you will spend more time on something you can get pretty good at it.
     I had a pre sentencing guideline case so the obscene amount of money didn't jack up the sentence and the penalty for federal bank fraud jumped from 5 years to 20 years the year after I plead guilty. The fedreral prisons were full of bank robbers, crooked lawyers and politicians, tax cheats and medicade defrauders and the occassional bank fraud like myself. Within 3-4 years all the federal prisons exploded with small time crack dealers doing 25-30 years without parole for a handfull of $10 dollar rocks. I had a real quite but big black guy come up to me and ask me how the hell did I conspire with a bunch of people on the corner I didnt even know? Federal conspiracy law has been described as the "quicksand of the prosecutor's playground," or something like that.... I explained to him that by standing around together breaking the law and presumably looking out for each other which is why they were all together and commiting the overt act in futherance of their breaking the law...that's conspiracy. And there is two kinds of federal criminal conspiracies one requireing a overt act an the other not. One is to break federal law and the other is against the US itself.
      I walked the track for 10 months in 100 degree heat at FCI Texarkana, Texas with a 19 year old all American looking kid from California who had a bank fraud conviction and I was dieing to know what he did and how he did it. Because by my own experience I knew that the government knew exactly what I did when I spanked their ass seaming at will, for a couple million dollars, but they did'nt know how I did it, which turned out to be the fly in the ointment when it came time to negotiate a plea agreement. That an the fact I didn't have any co-defendant's to get on the "Bus" before I did:   First one on the "Bus" gets the best seat the US Attorneys were fond of saying... The girl who showed me it in New Orleans was already doing state time for her own offenses. I negotiated a Rule 20 in federal court to combine my state offenses from Big Sur, California to Manhattan, NY in to one federal jurisdiction. I had tremendous leverage because although they knew exactly what I did they did not know how I did it;   where did I get the accounts? Did I have people in the banks feeding me information? I was either part of a interstate crime ring or I was a one man crime wave.... and most imporatly, I didnt have any codefendants to rat me out ...
     I am charged with six counts of bank fraud facing 30 years. I already had seen the Fed.R.Crim. Proc. and I knew they had 70 days to indicte me so I just chilled and about the 63rd day my dumbster attorney came to me to tell me the government was offering me 20 years but I had to tell them what I did. This was a Friday evening the most depressing time in jail and I told him hell no, I'll go to trial and only get 2o years, I didnt kill anybody. I wouldnt even tell him how I did it. Monday morning he comes back at 10 in the morning and says the government is offering five years and five years probation but you got to tell them how I defrauded seventy five banks out of two and a half million dollars from one end of the country to the other....
     I could never figure out why the kid was so reluctant to tell me what he did when most people want to blab about it (my self included). I remember riding around in my brand new luxury rental car with paper license plates laying down in the rear window pulling out of yet another bank drive thru with another 10K for the day wanting to scream it out the windows it was so easy....easy but ballsy.... I had this kid cornered in my Principles of Real Estate college course and another few hours on the track in the evening an weekends and after how many pleas he finally told me a scam easier than mine! He told me he got busted at the cashier window at Circus Circus in Las Vegas by the FBI kiting checks, usually the lamest crime on the books. I mean who can't open a couple a hundred dollar checking account and write ten thousand dollars in checks against it? You're going to get busted.
     No this kid did something a little slicker. He told me he filled out his own phony W2's apponting himself president and ceo of some big company and pay himself 300k a year in bonuses and salaries and made all the proper deductions and calculations and then walked into a federaly insured bank and obtained loans based upon this false information. Said they would give him a book of blank checks and a 25k line of credit where he would head straight to the tellers cage where the FBI just waited for him once the seen his pattern. He only had five years like me (I had five years and five years probation which I violated after a year an a half and started a fresh five). The FBI asked him where he came up with that scheme he he said he seen it on the "Rockford Files."
     There was a bunch of real mobsters in there too and because I was from NY and had a NY Register number 01863-055 I was rubbing shoulders with "Made Men". Them last three digits tells everybody where you are either from or got busted at. 053, 054 and 056 is NY, 004 was Miami, 034 New Orleans and so on... You won't believe the stories I can tell you. While in Texarkana FCI an having lived in New Orleans I got to eat lunch several times a week with Carlos Marcello, I'm not kiding you (another friend from New Orleans was tight with him and got me in the loop). And if that aint enough, besides being across from the Don himself on the right of me was Something Yarborough a Texas Supreme Court judge whose case is studied in law schools on public corruption and voter name recognition. Carlos by the was old as dirt, about 4'9" and would act like he couldnt hear if he didnt want to talk to you. One day he told my buddy says "Carlos, you benn to Guatemale haven't you? A slight smile came across his face as he told us about the FBI luring him and his lawyer to the federal building in New orleans and the FBI escorted and deported him to Guatemala or somewhere and the hassle it was getting back. Turns out he was born in Northern Africa across from Italy an came to the US at 2-3 years old so he wans'nt a American citizen. He was 5 years into a federal sentence for conspiring with the Govenor of Louisiana Buddy Roemer to fix hospital bids or something. They had him on tape at the Hotel Montelone in the French Quarter telling the informant "I got him right here," while pattin his front pocket, talking about the Governor of Louisiana.
      I rememeber reading the new book "Kingfish" while I was in there and the first page said something about Texarkana being surrounded by 30' foot walls and gun towers. There was none of that. A couple of fences with towers an 24 hour patrol. He told me the book was bull and I believed him. They had two of the Pizza Connection guys in there two I knew...1:47 PM 9/2/2010

Swamp People 2 By Mark Anthony Given

2010-08-28T09:44:00.003-07:00

I actually learned how to make chicken and dumplins on that rig. The cook was an alcoholic bakery chef from a big hotel in Florida who would get on the rigs for weeks at a time to try an dry out. Another cook I worked for would call the office every few months claiming the freezer broke and detroyed all the food and he would sell cases of T-Bones for $30 on crew change day. I was so scarred on that 2R rig with all them Aligator's jumping around. My only saving grace as far as I was concerned was the racket that rig made. Just the vibration alone would scare most animals away never mind the noise of giant diesel engines running day and night. But not them big gators. You would see them in the morning laying on metal barges that would be full of drill pipe if it wasnt in the ground. After about a month I actually looked forward to the noise and warm vibration and falling asleep at seven o'clock in the morning from pure exhaustion after "tripping pipe" for an entire 12 hour shift....after six weeks of Galley Hand I was invited back as a Roughneck after a couple of weeks off but I would go "back inside" to the Galley in the winter because I love to cook and there was a little to much politics on the drilling floor for me.The first time I walked on the drilling floor was on that 2R Driiling rig in Pier Part, Louisiana 10:20 AM 8/28/2010 and the smart ass driller shut the entire rig down to silence right at crew shift change so everyone could see it and said to me, "There's two things on this rig you don't get wet" (we were soaked most of the day with the water coming out of the pipes under pressure), and he pointed up to the Draw Works, (all the cables pulling pipes out of the ground), "That and me" pointing to himself, he turned and walked back up into his driller booth and fired up the rig. I chalked it up as him being a drama queen because he knew I was well liked and making the transition from Galley hand to roughneck dosent happen every day. I just hoped I wouldn't have to punch him in his face because I make it a point to get a long with everybody, and we never had any problems.
http://www.history.com/shows/swamp-people/videos?paidlink=1&vid=HIS_SEM_Search&keywords=swamp%2Bpeople&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=swamp%20people&utm_term=swamp%20people#swamp-people-big-head-bites-it

Swamp People

2010-08-28T08:53:00.000-07:00

Swamp People

The first oil rig I got on in 1977 I had to get in a little supply boat out of Pier Part, Louisiana where the new show Swamp People is being filmed. I thought I was in South America anywhere south of I-10 in Louisiana but when I walked in the only bussiness in town a little bar/resturant/community center and seen an old woman with no shoes on sitting at the bar drinking Pony Miller's at 10 o'clock on a Sunday Morning I knew I was right at home. 2R Drilling Company on a barge was the first rig I had ever been on and it was probably 20 minutes from the little dock across from the bar through swamp, where they would dredge a straight line to where ever they wanted to drill. 7" drill pipe weighing 2,000 lbs. and 29 feet tall was the Grandaddy of drill pipe because I never seen it on another job. Anytime you get on a rig the first place you go is the Galley or the Tool Pusher's Office. Because it was my first oil field experience I had to start at the bottom I came on as a Galley Hand and wound up as a Roughneck after a few months. Seven 12 hour days at 5-7$ an hour at 18 years old I never dreamed of taking home $500 a week, but that's what I was doing. Other than worrying about my little girl friend back at home in New York humping all my buddies I was having the time of my life. I remember sitting in the Galley around a table with a bunch of people with more tatoos than I had, that I didn't know in the middle of the swamp, and the wet smelly oil sulfer and gasoline and giant crashes in the water at night reminding you didnt want to get off that barge for any reason... 9:44 AM 8/28/2010

Happy Birthday Charlie Brown

2010-07-27T13:13:00.001-07:00

Happy Birthday Charlie Brown

You had just been born when your mother picked me up running away from yet another foster home and hitchhiking when I was 12-13 (I was going to the Florida State Fair which was the highlight of my young existence for many years) when your mother picked me up in a 1963Silver Thunderbird w/ suicide doors. I still don't know how she new who I was was, might have been Divine intervention because I had never met her before. Billy was roofing and I remembered getting up earlyin the morning dinking strong black coffee and smoking Camel cigerrettes waitin on daylight....it was so hot we would start early and quit early and I drove a huge dump truck about 30 feet along side the house to catch shingles coming off the roof and that was a blast when your a kid. Your dad got me drunk on Slow Gin and I remember the world passing by in a blur hanging out the big door of that Thunderbird throwing up while my brothers laughed their ass off! He also let me drive it 100 miles an hour on the Florida Turnpike in the middle of the night...
In what looked like a auspicious start for a young couple began as a hunt for me; that they had came all they way down to south Florida to find me and or any other family member they could find....I was anxious to go to NY to see my dunken parents....and that's where we went...Broke down beat up weekly rental trailer in Zepherhills, Florida the Boss's daughter fell in love with me and we were in like flint.... car was silver, the trailer was silver and now looking back all various shades of grey, but the one very bright spot in the center of the Universe for your father and your mother, and my memory, was you.

-Happy Birthday Charlie

Why I Study Torah

2010-07-24T12:10:00.000-07:00

And seek to find "Awe" in the Presence of the Almighty. "Awe" will gradually turn to "Love" and "Love" to "Cleaving." Love The Lord Thy God...hearken to His Voice, and cleave unto Him; for that is thy life and the length of days,says the author of Deuteronomy, aa pronouncement that has been taken literally by Jewish mystics from Biblical times onward. From this perspective, much of the Bible itself can be read as an instructive manual which charts the mystics way through withdrawl from sensory attachment (Ecclesiastes); confronts the heights and abysses of spiritual struggle (Psalms); and depics the soul in union with its creator (Song of Songs).
A man should actually detach his ego from his body until he has passed through all the worlds of and become one with God, til he disappears entirely out of the bodiless world. -Hassidic philosopher..this from Kabbalah, The Way of the Jewish Mystic Perle Epstein 1978.

Hard Rain Falling by Don Carpenter

2010-07-24T11:23:00.000-07:00

I read this book when I was 18 years old in the MCJ and I have been thinking about it all my life. I had no idea that others thought it was one of the best books ever written and it literally mirrowed my own life up til that point.....

http://swiftlytiltingplanet.wordpress.com/2010/04/18/hard-rain-falling-by-don-carpenter/

Spokane On The Fly

2010-06-15T12:24:00.000-07:00

This lady and her boyfriend went out of there way to get me to the other side of Spokane

and please do not drop me off in the middle of town...Drop me off on this side or the other...they caarried me a ways to the far side of Spokane bad mouthing the explosion of outsiders....
She told me, "You can't get a good blow job in California anymore;
all the cock suckers are in Montana!!"
priceless shit....

Marky's Big Adventure

2010-06-15T12:18:00.000-07:00

Found that "Missoula" sign at the bottom of the ramp...next big town is Missoula, Mt. I can't tell ya the number of people who hollered at me for not having a sign...

I think it does help too.....

Geared Up and Gone These people went out of there way to get me to the Washington-Idaho border so I could get a better ride...

Sacred charge - to keep the sacred seperate

2010-05-07T10:58:00.000-07:00

1:27 AM 5/7/2010

DISCLAIMER All this has been written before in hundreds of
formats; I try to present it in a way any one can understand it.
My main goal is to memorize it. I transcribe passages just for
the sake of worship when I get tired of reading it. It helps you
understand it and it is a high form for praise if done with good
intentions...

Leviticus 10.1 Sacred charge - to keep the sacred seperate
from the nonsacred
At the very moment that the inauguration of Israel's cult seems
to have reached its auspicious climax, two of Aaron's sons
Nadab and Abihu commit a blatant act of sacrilage, overstepping the strictly
prescribed bounds of acceptible worship, (10.1), The Lord
sanctifies His name by striking them down on the spot (10.2-3),
and the surviving members of the prisetly family are forbidden
to mourn their demise (10.4-7). They are reminded of there sacred charge - to keep the sacred seperate from the nonsacred. The brothers placed unlit coal or
wood for kindling in the pans for, in order to attract the divine fire to light them 11:30 AM 5/7/2010(see Kings 18.38). Their intent was for the divine fire to ignite their own pans; that is, they were attempting to arrogate control

of the deity to themselves....and got smoked!

Leviticus 10.1

Blogger Buzz: Blogger integrates with Amazon Associates

2010-05-02T07:14:00.000-07:00

I need this why?

Blogger Buzz: Blogger integrates with Amazon Associates

Hot Check and a Prayer

2010-05-01T13:14:00.001-07:00

Hot Check and a Prayer,
Copyright 2010 Mark Anthony Given
1:42 PM 5/1/2010

The Land of Milk and Honey is Now the Land of Money. -Bob Dylan

I WAS BORN APRIL 27, 1957 in a sleepy little outpost of Orlando, Florida at 7:07 in the morning. My Dad drove a Yellow Taxi Cab and my Mom was a housewife. Shortly after I was born I was sleeping in a pulled out dresser drawer of an ancient armoir or oak dresser and the entire house except my father was down with the measles and that's a touchy situation for newborns requireing a certain amount of prayer and presumably divine intervention.

BUT BEFORE THAT, the fiscally responsible hospital administrators refused to release me from the hospital unless and until the fee was paid in full. My decorated US Army Vetran father assured the powers that be that he had no money and showed them his bank book to prove it. Well the sharp bean counters insisted my father write them a check for the entire amount despite assuring them he did not have the money in the bank and didn't expect to have that much in the bank anytime soon. No check No baby....

SO MY FATHER LOADED UP THE THE SEVENTH SON and Once and Future King of Montana, with smiling Moms and headed straight downtown to the main branch of the defrauded bank to inform them of the grave and imminent injustice.

I tried to press my parents about the details of that part but could never get any specifics. Now days I love to tell that story and remind myself I came into this world on a Hot Check and a Prayer. 2:08 PM 5/1/2010

Finnished The Book of Exodus in my Jewish Study Bible

2010-04-30T07:46:00.000-07:00

http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=265&letter=T&search=torahHe who has a why to live can bear almost any how. -Friedrich Nietzsche

Just finnished The Book of Exodus in my Jewish Study Bible; arguably the most important book in the Bible since it presents the seminal events in Israel's history and the definitive institutions of its religion. Going to spend a few hours on Ithamar son of Aaron who showed up at the last minute to be consecrated into the priest hood...
This is the fifth reading for me; I have to go back and record all the names, do a little structural chronology on paper to makesure i got everything that happened in order and I am moving on to The Book of Leviticus where we really get out the whip to understand some of the denses material in the Old Testament!! Bring it On!! God gave me the divine spirit of intellect that given enough time, I will figure it out by reading it over and over and over!!! The more I read the easier it gets to figure it out. God will appoint an Angel to guide and protect you while you study and in the begining you will only learn one word a day, Isaiah said "Brick by brick" meaning word by word I will break it down to understand it. I got one more thing for ya and the lecture is over: This might be my favorite benifit!! As a gentile studying The Torah, I am automatically elevated to the stautus of a Levitical High Priest!!! "A Gentile who studies the Torah is as great as the high priest" (B. Ḳ. 38a).

Read more: http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=265&letter=T&search=torah#ixzz0mawY8OvN

No kid'n! When you get to Heaven you go straight to the head of the line. Basically because you are using your precious time to do something you are not commanded to do; I could be fishing or riding my bike but I choose to Study Torah!

Mt Rabbi!! I love this Guy!!

2010-04-29T16:07:00.000-07:00

"Toward a Meaningful Life."

***

“We stand at the threshold of a new time, of a heightened spiritual awareness and consciousness. Following the three major revolutions of the past, agricultural, industrial and the present computer and information revolution, we are about to enter the 4th and final frontier: the spiritual revolution. As opposed to the previous revolutions, this movement requires the active participation of each one of us. Global transformation can come about only through a grass roots effort and internal transformation. Each of us is a flame. Like a flame, we each have the power and the responsibility to light another flame and yet another, forever and ever, with the knowledge we acquire.

Let us join together in a community of meaning, connecting with each other - flame by flame, link by link, musical note to musical note -- in one seamless chain that will ripple through the entire universe with resonating truth and deeper meaning, and bring about global transformation -- personally and collectively.”

– Rabbi Simon Jacobson

http://meaningfullife.com/about/mission/

109 IQ I can live with that

2010-04-29T14:53:00.000-07:00

http://www.testq.com/career/quizzes/results/121

I had to guess a couple of questions...

Your IQ Score is: 109

You are equipped with a verbal arsenal that enables you to understand complex issues and communicate on a particularly high level. These talents make you a Word Warrior.

Whether or not you recognize it, your vocabulary is your strongest suit—use it whenever you can. Since your command of words is so great, you are also a terrific communicator — able to articulate big ideas to just about anyone. Your wordsmithing prowess will also help in artistic and creative pursuits. The power of words translates to fresh ideas off paper too. Since you have so many words at your disposal, you are in a unique position to describe things in an original way, as well as see the future in your mind's eye. In short, your strengths allow you to be a visionary — able to extrapolate and come up with a multitude of fresh ideas. And you are in good company — bask in the brilliance of Word Warriors who have walked before you. William Shakespeare let loose the power of his pen. His ability to articulate the most subtle nuances of human nature and to create colorful characters are why his stories still have a major impact — even 400 years after he first wrote them. Whether you put pen to paper or use your understanding of the words around you to come up with creative approaches to problems, your potential as a Word Warrior is terrific.

109

2010-04-27T13:48:00.000-07:00

A good Birthday for me is when I remember it a week later; but I gotta admit, and if you believe in the numbers like I do and all the righteous stuff that has happened to me in my life, I feel like I been sanctified!!

4-27-57 = 88 = 16 = 1+6 = 7, the number of perfection, completion and there is only one. The most sacred number:

And in my religion (I am a Babtist Christian) and the Jewish Encyclopedia

The general symbol for all association with God; the favorite religious number of Judaism, typifying the covenant of holiness and sanctification, and also all that was holy and sanctifying in purpose. Which means to me that anything associated with the number Seven is righteous right out the gate!!!

I gotta Front Row Seat in Heaven and I am taking some folks with me!!

Hurt, Trent Reznor

2010-04-20T09:21:00.001-07:00

Hurt

I hurt myself today

to see if I still feel

I focus on the pain

the only thing that's real

the needle tears a hole

the old familiar sting

try to kill it all away

but I remember everything

what have I become?

my sweetest friend

everyone I know

goes away in the end

and you could have it all

my empire of dirt

I will let you down

I will make you hurt

I wear this crown of thorns

upon my liar's chair

full of broken thoughts

I cannot repair

beneath the stains of time

the feelings disappear

you are someone else

I am still right here

what have I become?

my sweetest friend

everyone I know

goes away in the end

and you could have it all

my empire of dirt

I will let you down

I will make you hurt

if I could start again

a million miles away

I would keep myself

I would find a way
- Trent Reznor
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o22eIJDtKho

And death shall have no dominion

2010-04-16T11:29:00.000-07:00

And death shall have no dominion.

Dead men naked they shall be one

With the man in the wind and the west moon;

When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,

They shall have stars at elbow and foot;

Though they go mad they shall be sane,

Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again

Though lovers be lost love shall not;

And death shall have no dominion.

DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT

2010-04-16T10:11:00.000-07:00

DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT

By Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rage at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

Because their words had forked no lightning they

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright

Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight

Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,

Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

TEN QUESTIONS GOD MAY ASK YOU AT THE GATES OF HEAVEN, Copyright 2010

2010-04-14T09:03:00.001-07:00

TEN QUESTIONS GOD MAY ASK YOU AT THE GATES OF HEAVEN, Copyright 2010, By Mark Anthony Given,
I. What does the letters ADAM mean other than the name of the first human?

II. Why did Moses stutter?

III. Was Moses brother Aaron younger or older than Moses?

IV. How many people left during the Exodus?

V. Who were the other "multitudes" who left with Moses?

VI. How did the Hebrews leave Egypt?

VII. What was the Seventh Plague?

VIII.How many years were the Hebrews in Egypt?

IX. What was in the jar that Moses told Aaron to place before God?

I had to read the New Testament three times and the Old Testament four times to answer these questions....good luck on your own... PS Study Torah!!

"Tony Montana Meets Travis Bickle"

2010-04-10T12:36:00.001-07:00

TRAVIS BICKLE MEETS TONY MONTANA"

An Original Screenplay By Mark Anthony Given, Copyright 2010 Mark Anthony Given
Say Hello to the Bad Guy's. "Tony Montana Meets Travis Bickle" TONY MONTANA in SCARFACE lives in cinematic history as the ultimate bad boy who comes to this country with nothin; and after washing dishes at a greasy spoon, embarks on the fast track of the American Dream splattering cinema history with the bloodiest, compelling and Boldest character ever filmed.

TB (TRAVIS BICKLE): The Troubled TAXI DRIVER reflected America's need for answers to a sorrry state of affairs, American inner city blight with political corruption turned inside out the depth of cruelty and compassion of the human experience.

SYNOPSIS I don't know how this can be filmed but I invisioned AL PACHINO dressed in character as TONY MONTANA on set in the canteen talking with Robert DeNero also in character as SCARFACE are talking about their movies.....it is like they don't realize they are actors......only in an alternative universe could these guy's run into each other, but in that universe (the movies), when TAXI DRIVER asks SCARFACE, "How did you get that scar on your face, AL's in character response juxtaposed with movie's vs reality start to blend and the right actors can spark this thing off. What takes it over the top is the characters talking about real events that occurred during the filming of the movies respectively, eg, TB asks about SCARFACE film set having to be relocated because of community protest upsetting the shoot... (portraying Cubans as drug dealers).
Excerpted from (I don't really care what it's called, ie. "Tony Montana Meets Travis Bickle, Copyright 2010 Mark Anthony Given (which I know sucks and the movie studios have whole departments of geniuses who retitle anything I got, and I got nothing. A good title can only stand beside the surreal dimension of this movie...
"TRAVIS BICKLE MEETS TONY MONTANA"

THIRD DRAFT SPRING 2010

INT. DAYLIGHT FADE IN

TB (TRAVIS BICLE): How did you get that scar on your face (briefly pointing to his face):
TM (TONY MONTANA): A machetto......it happened in the cane fiel's of 'Cuba. I had been put away for less than a year....... they work you like dogs, and the heat makes people very hot headed. One day this guy I knew from my childhood walked up to me in the fields, said he heard I was there and he wanted to talk to me. I told him he had he wrong guy, that I did not know him, stay the fuck away from me.... He tried to act surprised, but he knew I did not like him and would not associate with anyone I did not know or like. Something in my mind reminded me not to trust anyone except a few guys I knew all my life. One of them was with me and seen this encounter and later told me the guy was a chomo, that he just got there and he was trying to get in where he fit...

SCENE TWO
INT. DAYLIGH
TM: (leaning over in his chair picking at his nails) Remember in my movie when I went to see my mother and sister and she refused me; she told me I was scum and spit at me. She didnt have a pot to piss in and she threw and handfull of hundred dollar bills back at me like it was toilet paper..(Pause)
I remember that like it happened yesterday and it still hurts right now. (12:19 PM 4/10/2010) I never hated her more or loved her more at that moment, almost at the same time... It was then that I knew that I was a truly bad guy. (long pause) I knew it when they put me in that shit hole in 'Cuba and left me there. Weeks living with your own shit and piss, the darkness and the smell of everything evil and the awful visions.. I knew it by the look in the eyes of the guards. I couldn't see nothing for a week when I crawled out of there. But every where I went I could see the look in there faces like "What kinda mother Fkr survives some shit like that." But one look at me here (pointing to his right eye), and they knew. My mother seen it too..
FADE OUT
1:12 PM 4/10/2010 (I keep these time and date stamps to prove I wrote this someday...)

Paradise Montana, An Original Screenplay By Mark Anthony Given

2010-04-10T12:17:00.001-07:00

I have excerpted from my screenplays here if anyone knows someone at CAA http://www.caa.com/ or knows of an established agent who will read my plays.... I am in the process of submitting same to a handfull of screenplay competition's and will serialize my favorite and currently in progress; "Paradise Montana" An Original Screenplay by Mark Anthon Given. Briefly, I would call it "On the Road" by Jack Kerouac meets "Lolita" by Nabakov.... and is guranteed to piss a lot of people off by forcing them to face what's right in their living room that no one wants to talk about it.... not publicly anyway.....it is actually posted/serialied here with restricted access. Please enquire above. 12:36 PM 4/10/2010

Moses's Removes Pharaoh's Crown.

2010-04-10T08:52:00.000-07:00

Moses's Removes Pharaoh's Crown.

Moses was a very large child at the age of three (Ex. R. i. 32; comp. Josephus; l.c.; Philo, l.c.); and it was at this time that, sitting at the king's table in the presence of several princes and counselors, he took the crown from Pharaoh's head and placed it on his own ("D. Y." l.c.; for another version see "M. W." l.c.). The princes were horrified at the boy's act; and the soothsayer said that this was the same boy who, in accordance with their former predictions, would destroy the kingdom of Pharaoh and liberate Israel (Josephus, l.c.; "M. W." l.c.). Balaam and Jethro were at that time also among the king's counselors (Soṭah 11a; Sanh. 106). Balaam advised the king to kill the boy at once; but Jethro (according to "D. Y." l.c., it was Gabriel in the guise of one of the king's counselors) said that the boy should first be examined, to see whether he had sense enough to have done such an act intentionally. All agreed with this advice. A shining piece of gold, or a precious stone, together with a live coal, was placed on a plate before the boy, to see which of the two he would choose. The angel Gabriel then guided his hand to the coal, which he took up and put into his mouth. This burned his tongue, causing him to stutter (comp. Ex. iv. 10); but it saved his life ("M. W." l.c.; "D. Y." l.c.; "S. Y." l.c.; Ex. R. i. 31).
Read more: http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=830&letter=M&search=moses#ixzz0kiH1GSZf

Torah Study

2010-03-27T14:58:00.004-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtSJ0M5kLRoWhen I need inspiration to study I listen to this guy, or in leu of studying I listen to rabbi's http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtSJ0M5kLRo

The King in Repose

2010-03-25T08:54:00.000-07:00

Look at the footnotes!! I love footnotes!! That's the backstory... I read each page three times and looked up every person or place I didn't know. Now I get to read it slow and really absorb it because I now know who these people are... One of the early rabbi's taught that at this level of study one must beg and plead with God for more knowledge and wisdom and I am want to do that but afraid at the same time because there are some things in this world you don't wan't to know.....

Finnished the entire Old Testament in 30 months!

2010-03-25T08:47:00.000-07:00

Thirty months and five yellow legal pads of notes....Now I get to start at the begining and read it without the veil of ignorance. Gonna show ya one more pic how detailed this book is:

Spring in Montana The Last Best Place

2010-03-25T06:48:00.000-07:00

Desire makes everything blossom; possession makes everything wither and fade.

Marcel Proust, Les Plaisirs et les Jours (1896)

2010-03-19T12:51:00.000-07:00

When I met this old guy I look after I was telling him I slept outside and was from Mississippi living on the beach in a tent....(He's got the mind of about a 12 year old) and that I was "The King of Mississippi? He responded "I'm The King of Montana!". He's got a full unkept beard, leather hat and mild scizophrenia (there are pic of him on the blog and I thought I'd make him a a web blog and write down some of the stuff he told me cause some of it is quite funny if it wasn't real...(his dad was an illiterate drunk and filled his already messed up head w ignorant misconceptions....Been in Warm Springs, MT state mental hospital several times). Anyway, he wasn't producing enough material to sustain a blog so I started using it.
Had a caregiver in a assisted living facility in Everette, WA contact me via facebook and reunited my oldest brother with his famil after 38 years of wonder what ever happened to him. Might go see David soon if the weather is nice. Leave early in the morning and could conceivable be there by dark....even hitch hiking which is what I would do or hitch hike and ride my bike (Montana is full of pick up trucks....). later for ya

Remission of sin

2010-03-12T10:19:00.000-07:00

Remission of Sin

Prayer

Fasting

Confession

Torah Study

Repentance when all is gone....

2010-03-12T10:02:00.001-07:00

Hoping to create a path across a stream, a traveler threw all his silver coins into the water. As he approached the stream, however, he found that all his coins but one had sunk to the bottom. He managed to rescue that one coin and used it to pay the ferryman, who rowed him across. Repentance, says Bahya , is like that last coin.

When all of life's treasures are gone, it alone will help a man across the waters of life.

Repentance, says Bahya , is like that last coin. When all of life's treasures are gone, it alone will help a man across the waters of life.

2010-03-12T09:55:00.000-07:00

Repentance, says Bahya , is like that last coin. When all of life's treasures are gone, it alone will help a man across the waters of life.

Wyoming gov. signs law adopting 'cowboy ethics'

2010-03-03T18:07:00.000-07:00

Wyoming gov. signs law adopting 'cowboy ethics'

CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) -- The principles of "cowboy ethics" are now part of Wyoming law.

Gov. Dave Freudenthal signed legislation Wednesday adopting an official Wyoming state code.
The symbolic measure spells out 10 ethics derived from a "Code of the West" outlined in a book by author and retired Wall Street investor James Owen.
The ethics code carries no criminal penalties and is not meant to replace any civil codes. The state code admonishes residents and lawmakers to live courageously, take pride in their work, finish what they start, do what's necessary, be tough but fair, keep promises, ride for the brand, talk less and say more, remember that some things aren't for sale, and know where to draw the line.

The Happy Heart

2010-02-18T07:10:00.001-07:00

Study: Happiness Good for the Heart

Positive People Have Less Heart Disease
By Salynn Boyles

WebMD Health NewsReviewed by Louise Chang, MDFeb. 17, 2010

Whether you view the glass as half empty or half full may help determine your risk for heart disease. Just as negative emotions such as depression, anger, and hostility are risk factors for heart attack and stroke, happiness seems to protect the heart. This was the finding from a large study that examined the impact of positive personality traits like happiness, contentment, and enthusiasm on heart disease risk.
Researchers followed 1,739 healthy adults living in Nova Scotia, Canada, for 10 years to determine whether attitudes affected their health.
At the start of the study, trained professionals assessed the participants' degree of expression of negative emotions like depression, hostility, and anxiety and positive emotions such as joy, happiness, and excitement.
Naturally happy people certainly do experience depression and other negative emotions from time to time, lead researcher Karina W. Davidson, PhD, of Columbia University Medical Center tells WebMD. But this is usually situational and transient.
The tendency toward expression of positive emotions such as happiness and contentment is known in psychological circles as "positive affect."
“We know from previous studies that negative emotion is predictive of heart disease,” Davidson says. “We wanted to find out if positive affect is protective.”
Happiness and the Heart
After accounting for known heart disease risk factors, the researchers found that the happiest people were 22% less likely to develop heart disease over the 10 years of follow-up than people who fell in the middle of the negative-positive emotion scale.
People with the most negative emotions had the highest risk for heart disease and people who scored highest for happiness had the lowest risk.
This observed protection persisted even when naturally happy people were experiencing transient depressive symptoms.
The findings do not prove that happiness protects the heart. For that, Davidson says, rigorously designed clinical trials will be needed.
"It is just speculation at this point, but there are several possible explanations for how happiness may protect the heart," Davidson says.
They include:
Healthier lifestyle: Happy people tend to sleep better, eat better, smoke less, and get more exercise. All of these things lower heart disease risk.
Physiological impact: Happiness may produce a host of positive chemical changes -- such a reduction in stress hormones -- that are good for the heart.
Genetic influences: It could be that people who are predisposed to happiness are also predisposed to have fewer heart attacks.
"If we are able to change people's level of positive affect we may be able to lower their risk for heart disease," Davidson says.
She recommends devoting at least 15 to 20 minutes a day to doing something enjoyable and relaxing. And make sure this activity is not the first thing to be abandoned on a busy day.
"You have to commit to it," she says. "Schedule the time and stick to it."
Don’t Worry, Be Happy
Research into happiness and how it impacts health, known as positive psychology, is a relatively new.
It was long believed that most people are hardwired to be either naturally happy or not, regardless of life events.
But this view has changed in recent years as more becomes known about the science of happiness, University of Michigan professor of medicine Bertram Pitt, MD, tells WebMD. In an editorial published with the study, Pitt writes that interventions that focus on improving social skills and decreasing social anxiety may lower heart disease risk.
Both the study and editorial appear in the European Heart Journal.
Pitt cites numerous strategies that could help naturally negative people become happier, including:
Express gratitude on a regular basis.
Practice being optimistic.
Engage in frequent acts of kindness.
Visualize one's best self.
Savor joyful events.
Practice forgiveness.
"Finally, regular exercise and sexual activity and good sleep are all associated with increased self-reported happiness," he writes.
http://www.webmd.com/heart-disease/news/20100217/study-happiness-good-heart

So Now I am A Prophet

2010-02-13T08:43:00.000-07:00

Have'nt owned a car in 10 years...riding to walmart last week..

I just noticed my perdiction on January 25, 2010 that Farve would hand the Super Bowl over to us... (I lived in New Orleans 20 years and but for my daughter and grand daughter there I probably wouldn't care as much...The City That Care Forgot....).

alien fire

2010-02-12T16:41:00.000-07:00

Modern Library 100 Best Novels

2010-02-11T11:34:00.003-07:00

Modern Library 100 Best Novels
I was stunned to see I have read 26 books on this list!!! Yahooo I got a way to go. I love structure an can now just go down the list...I will be done with Torah in a few months (I will still read it every day, just not in such a structured way as present) .....I can get back to the classics....
1. 1922 Ulysses James Joyce
2. 1925 The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald
3. 1916 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man James Joyce
4. 1955 Lolita Vladimir Nabokov
5. 1932 Brave New World Aldous Huxley
6. 1929 The Sound and the Fury William Faulkner
7. 1961 Catch-22 Joseph Heller
8. 1940 Darkness at Noon Arthur Koestler
9. 1913 Sons and Lovers D. H. Lawrence
10. 1939 The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck
11. 1947 Under the Volcano Malcolm Lowry
12. 1903 The Way of All Flesh Samuel Butler
13. 1949 Nineteen Eighty-Four George Orwell
14. 1934 I, Claudius Robert Graves
15. 1927 To the Lighthouse Virginia Woolf
16. 1925 An American Tragedy Theodore Dreiser
17. 1940 The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter Carson McCullers
18. 1969 Slaughterhouse-Five Kurt Vonnegut
19. 1952 Invisible Man Ralph Ellison
20. 1940 Native Son Richard Wright
21. 1959 Henderson the Rain King Saul Bellow
22. 1934 Appointment in Samarra John O'Hara
23. 1938 U.S.A. (trilogy) John Dos Passos
24. 1919 Winesburg, Ohio Sherwood Anderson
25. 1924 A Passage to India E. M. Forster
26. 1902 The Wings of the Dove Henry James
27. 1903 The Ambassadors Henry James
28. 1934 Tender Is the Night F. Scott Fitzgerald
29. 1935 Studs Lonigan (trilogy)
30. 1915 The Good Soldier Ford Madox Ford
31. 1945 Animal Farm George Orwell
32. 1904 The Golden Bowl Henry James
33. 1900 Sister Carrie Theodore Dreiser
34. 1934 A Handful of Dust Evelyn Waugh
35. 1930 As I Lay Dying William Faulkner
36. 1946 All the King's Men Robert Penn Warren
37. 1927 The Bridge of San Luis Rey Thornton Wilder
38. 1910 Howards End E. M. Forster
39. 1953 Go Tell It on the Mountain James Baldwin
40. 1948 The Heart of the Matter Graham Greene
41. 1954 Lord of the Flies William Golding
42. 1970 Deliverance James Dickey
43. 1951-1975 A Dance to the Music of Time (series) Anthony Powell
44. 1928 Point Counter Point Aldous Huxley
45. 1926 The Sun Also Rises Ernest Hemingway
46. 1907 The Secret Agent Joseph Conrad
47. 1904 Nostromo Joseph Conrad
48. 1915 The Rainbow D. H. Lawrence
49. 1920 Women in Love D. H. Lawrence
50. 1934 Tropic of Cancer Henry Miller
51. 1948 The Naked and the Dead Norman Mailer
52. 1969 Portnoy's Complaint Philip Roth
53. 1962 Pale Fire Vladimir Nabokov
54. 1932 Light in August William Faulkner
55. 1957 On the Road Jack Kerouac (maybe favorite listened on CD while hiking on the beach from Biloxi, MS to Bay Saint Louis, MS few years ago)
56. 1930 The Maltese Falcon Dashiell Hammett
57. 1924-1928 Parade's End Ford Madox Ford
58. 1920 The Age of Innocence Edith Wharton
59. 1911 Zuleika Dobson Max Beerbohm
60. 1961 The Moviegoer Walker Percy
61. 1927 Death Comes for the Archbishop Willa Cather
62. 1951 From Here to Eternity James Jones
63. 1957 The Wapshot Chronicle John Cheever
64. 1951 The Catcher in the Rye J. D. Salinger (read this a couple of times when I was a kid
65. 1962 A Clockwork Orange Anthony Burgess
66. 1915 Of Human Bondage W. Somerset Maugham
67. 1902 Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad
68. 1920 Main Street Sinclair Lewis
69. 1905 The House of Mirth Edith Wharton
70. 1957-1960 The Alexandria Quartet Lawrence Durrell
71. 1929 A High Wind in Jamaica Richard Hughes
72. 1961 A House for Mr Biswas V. S. Naipaul
73. 1939 The Day of the Locust Nathanael West
74. 1929 A Farewell to Arms Ernest Hemingway
75. 1938 Scoop Evelyn Waugh
76. 1962 The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie Muriel Spark
77. 1939 Finnegans Wake James Joyce
78. 1901 Kim Rudyard Kipling
79. 1908 A Room with a View E. M. Forster
80. 1945 Brideshead Revisited Evelyn Waugh
81. 1953 The Adventures of Augie March Saul Bellow
82. 1971 Angle of Repose Wallace Stegner
83. 1979 A Bend in the River V. S. Naipaul
84. 1938 The Death of the Heart Elizabeth Bowen
85. 1900 Lord Jim Joseph Conrad
86. 1975 Ragtime E. L. Doctorow
87. 1908 The Old Wives' Tale Arnold Bennett
88. 1903 The Call of the Wild Jack London
89. 1945 Loving Henry Green
90. 1980 Midnight's Children Salman Rushdie
91. 1932 Tobacco Road Erskine Caldwell (Think about some of the charecters in this book often....
92. 1983 Ironweed William Kennedy
93. 1965 The Magus John Fowles
94. 1966 Wide Sargasso Sea Jean Rhys
95. 1954 Under the Net Iris Murdoch
96. 1979 Sophie's Choice William Styron
97. 1949 The Sheltering Sky Paul Bowles
98. 1934 The Postman Always Rings Twice James M. Cain
99. 1955 The Ginger Man J. P. Donleavy
100. 1918 The Magnificent Ambersons Booth Tarkington

I would add a few off the top of my head: Sweet Thursday, Steinbeck, Don Juan, Carlos Casteneda, Hard Rain Fallin. John Carpenter, The Book of Esther (yes it is fiction), I could go on and on, having read nearly 300 books...

The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious Abert Einstein

2010-02-11T11:18:00.002-07:00

The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science.
Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed. It was the experience of mystery -- even if mixed with fear -- that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds: it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity. In this sense, and only this sense, I am a deeply religious man... I am satisfied with the mystery of life's eternity and with a knowledge, a sense, of the marvelous structure of existence -- as well as the humble attempt to understand even a tiny portion of the Reason that manifests itself in nature."

"How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he senses it. But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people -- first of all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness is wholly dependent, and then for the many, unknown to us, to whose destinies we are bound by the ties of sympathy. A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving...

"I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves -- this critical basis I call the ideal of a pigsty. The ideals that have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth. Without the sense of kinship with men of like mind, without the occupation with the objective world, the eternally unattainable in the field of art and scientific endeavors, life would have seemed empty to me. The trite objects of human efforts -- possessions, outward success, luxury -- have always seemed to me contemptible.

"My passionate sense of social justice and social responsibility has always contrasted oddly with my pronounced lack of need for direct contact with other human beings and human communities. I am truly a 'lone traveler' and have never belonged to my country, my home, my friends, or even my immediate family, with my whole heart; in the face of all these ties, I have never lost a sense of distance and a need for solitude..."
"I see in Nature a magnificent structure... that must fill a thinking person with a
feeling of humility..."

"My political ideal is democracy. Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized. It is an irony of fate that I myself have been the recipient of excessive admiration and reverence from my fellow-beings, through no fault, and no merit, of my own. The cause of this may well be the desire, unattainable for many, to understand the few ideas to which I have with my feeble powers attained through ceaseless struggle. I am quite aware that for any organization to reach its goals, one man must do the thinking and directing and generally bear the responsibility. But the led must not be coerced, they must be able to choose their leader. In my opinion, an autocratic system of coercion soon degenerates; force attracts men of low morality... The really valuable thing in the pageant of human life seems to me not the political state, but the creative, sentient individual, the personality; it alone creates the noble and the sublime, while the herd as such remains dull in thought and dull in feeling.

"This topic brings me to that worst outcrop of herd life, the military system, which I abhor... This plague-spot of civilization ought to be abolished with all possible speed. Heroim on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism -- how passionately I hate them! 1955 (April 18) Dies in Princeton.

Girl, 12, leaps onto back door of thieves' van, retrieves stolen bag

2010-02-11T11:06:00.002-07:00

I love this story...

By Jonathan Lis, Haaretz Correspondent
A 12-year-old girl chased after a group of thieves and hung onto the back door of their van in Jerusalem on Monday morning, until they threw a stolen bag out of the vehicle and fled.
The girl's mother had left the car to put her little brother into daycare on David Raziel Street in Jerusalem, when the thieves noticed the girl sitting alone, and decided to grab the bag from the car. The girl got out and gave chase after the three robbers, who went into a commercial van and began to flee the scene. The girl hung on the rear door of their van and startled the thieves, who then hurled the stolen bag from the van. She jumped off and the three fled the area. The girl was lightly hurt, but did not require treatment.
Jerusalem police have opened an investigation into the incident.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/993249.html

Amazing things will happen

2010-02-09T09:17:00.000-07:00

Grizzly Gulch, Montana 02.08.10

AMAZING THINGS WILL HAPPEN

ATTENTION FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE PRESS RELEASE TO ALL MY PEEPS

I intend to spend a month learning how to blow glass and turn out some high end exquisitively original and expensive glass pot pipes!! Go look at videos whatever, cop the equipment and learn to burn money!!! Nice pipe with couple dollars of good glass, a couple talented twist here and there and 30 seconds later wala! Eureka $60-120$. Kids seam to think the more expensive they are the better the are. Take em around to some high end boutiques and sell em on line.
Right now I am on the final stretch of finishing the entire Bible: Chapter 10 of The Book of Daniel. Read each book three and four times; looked up every word and place I didn't know (Jewish Encyclopedia, Wixipedia etc.). I always told people I wanted to be a Biblical Scholar when I grew up for the laugh....but I wasn't joking!! Book of Esther the coolest Book so far though Daniel's visions and that creepy hand writing on the wall..... I don't know how much Biblical scholoring I am gonna be doing but Smarter Than The Average Bear has to stay ahead of the curve....

Brett Favre lets Saints march on to Super Bowl

2010-01-25T16:31:00.001-07:00

I swiped this from the Los Angeles Times Sports Page so I never forget this day.

From New Orleans
Lord, how I want to be in that number.

On a raging Sunday in the bayou, they marched, through 42 years of football misery, through the jagged remains of human tragedy, to a Super Bowl that will surely taste like gumbo and feel like salvation.
In a chilly and deafening building that a few years ago was a symbol of Hurricane Katrina, the New Orleans Saints finally came marching in to an NFC championship victory that seemed as much destined as deserved.

"This is for everybody in this city who's had homes who used to be wet," Coach Sean Payton shouted after one of the most memorable, meaningful games in NFL playoff history.
At this, 71,276 fans shouted back, again and again, the Superdome transformed from a place of mourning to a cacophony of joy.
For nearly four exhausting hours, the Saints had clearly lost the battle to the Minnesota Vikings. Yet, buoyed by the thousands chanting and millions more praying, they somehow won the game.
It took several little gifts from the football gods, a huge one from the Football God, an overtime coin toss, and a game-winning kick by a guy who began the season on a drug suspension, but it happened. Saints 31, Vikings 28, and for the next two weeks, Who Dat is no longer a question, but an answer. "From the horrors of Hurricane Katrina to the Super Bowl, God has truly graced us." The words were spoken in the bowels of the Superdome late Sunday, with horns blaring outside and music thumping inside and Brett Favre hobbling into the arms of his wife. They were spoken not by game-winning kicker Garrett Hartley, or game-saving defender Tracy Porter, but by the one person who really knows how this was accomplished.
"Following the Saints has been like 40 years in the desert . . . and then there was a flood," said Sister Mary Andrew, principal of a French Quarter school. "But God has finally led us out."
If that is the case, then it was Favre who unlocked the door.
How does it happen that a team is outgained, 475 yards to 257, and is futilely trying to hold off a Hall of Fame quarterback deep in its territory in the final seconds of a tie game, and still wins?
Because for all his greatness, Favre is still Favre, and instead of just running the ball a few open yards into field-goal range and then falling with 19 seconds remaining, he insisted on being a hero, throwing a pass across his body into traffic.
Porter picked off the pass to send the game into overtime. From there, destiny required a failed coin-toss call by the Vikings, a dropped interception by Viking Ben Leber, two bad Vikings penalties, a 10-play Saints drive, and a 40-yard Hartley field goal. Yeah, all that. In about 10 minutes. Multiply that by an entire evening and you have a classic.
"The Saints are about entertainment," linebacker Scott Fujita said. "And today you had it all, the highs, the lows, everything."
In the end, the highs rang through the building like Mardi Gras on steroids, fans screaming and hugging and dancing and refusing to leave.
Through the confetti of those highs, you could see the lows of a 40-year-old man hobbling off the field with his head in jersey.

That would be Favre, who went to Minnesota this season with the intention of playing in one more Super Bowl before the end of his career, and was ultimately flattened in the effort.
"I don't even know where to begin," he said at the outset of his news conference, his throat thick and his face scratched.
He could begin with how he was punished as never before, yet he hung in there to throw for 310 yards and a touchdown.
He could continue with how he was helped off the field late in the third quarter after his ankle was crunched between two tacklers, how he lay on a sideline table with his hands on his helmet, how his career should have ended that moment.
"We thought he was done, he was checked out, we had finished him," defensive end Will Smith said. "We were even game planning for their next quarterback . . . then he hobbles back into the game. We were like, whoa, he's back?"
They weren't the only ones stunned. Fueled by Favre's return, the Vikings continued to dominate the Saints but ultimately could not overcome their three lost fumbles and Favre's final interception.
In case it looked familiar, yes, it was the same type of silly pass that cost the Packers the NFC championship two seasons ago in overtime against the New York Giants.
"I probably should have ran it," Favre said of his losing play. "I don't know how many yards we needed for a field goal, but I knew we needed some."
He didn't know how many yards because he was so beat up. The Vikings earlier suffered a damaging 12-player penalty on that last drive, and Favre didn't know anything about that, either.
"To be honest with you, I don't know who should have been in or not," he said.
As Favre limped slowly down the hall to the interview room, some Saints employees cheered him, while another Saints fan hurled ice and punches at an NFL official trying to guide him. It was that kind of night.
"I wonder if I can hold up, especially after a day like today, physically and mentally," Favre said.
At the other end of the Superdome tunnel, the Saints were swaggering around after holding up an entire town.
"To be able to represent a city that looks to us as a beacon of hope is awesome," Fujita said. "This is a monumental day." Their quarterback, Drew Brees, was hassled and inconsistent. Their running attack was spotty. They
converted only three third downs.

But they scored one touchdown after a 61-yard kickoff return by Courtney Roby. They scored one after a Percy Harvin fumble deep in Vikings territory. They stopped the Vikings on two other fumbles at the Saints' five- and 10-yard lines.
After years of being plagued by mistakes, the Saints finally watched somebody else make them, and celebrated with each blunder, and who can blame them?
In the end of an exhilarating Sunday night, it seems the Saints deserved to be running through the confetti and smoke to the Superdome stands like little kids looking for their parents, posing and waving and chanting, a town and a team joined.

bill.plaschke@latimes.com
twitter.com/billplaschke

This was in the comment section from someone (Mark Hirsh) who was clearly a Viking fan), but I love the stats. I said last week Farve would hand this us...
He is a Good Ol Boy. That interception will be on his grave stone and how he will be remembered. Mark my words!!!
2009 playoffs - ended with INT
2007 playoffs - ended with INT
2004 playoffs - ended game with 4 INT's
2003 playoffs - ended with INT
2001 playoffs - ended game with 6 (!!!) INT's
Some playoff INT %'s for you as well:

Brady - 395 comp, 637 att, 15 int - 2.3%
Young - 275 att, 447 comp, 12 int - 2.7%
Manning - 404 comp, 647 att, 18 int - 2.9%
Montana - 460 comp, 734 att, 21 int - 2.9%
Warner - 307 comp, 462 att, 14 int - 3.0%
Elway - 355 comp, 651 att, 21 int - 3.2%
Aikman - 320 comp, 502 att, 17 int - 3.4%
Marino - 385 comp, 687 att, 24 int - 3.5%
Favre - 481 comp, 815 att, 30 int - 3.7%
Worst playoff INT % amongst guys considered his peers.

The Book of Ecclesties last chapter beautiful poem

2010-01-23T07:18:00.000-07:00

   O youth, enjoy yourself while you are young! Let your heart lead you to enjoyment in the days of your youth. Follow the desires of your heart and the glances of your eyes--but know well that God will call you to account for all such thing.--and banish care from your mind, and pluck sorrow out of your flesh! For youth and black hair are fleeting.
Chapter 12. So appreciate your vigor in the days of your youth, before those days of sorrow come and those years arrive when you will say, "I have no pleasure in them"'before sun and light and moon and stars grow dark, and the clouds come back after the rain:

When the gaurds of the house become shaky,
And the men of valor are bent,
And the maids that grind, grown few, are idle,
And the ladies that peer through the windows grow dim,
And the doors to the street are shut--
With the noise of the hand mill growing fainter,
And all the strains of music dying down;
When one is afraid of heights
And there is terror on the road.--
For the Almond tree may blossom'
The grasshopper be burdened,
And the caper bush may bud again;
But man sets out for his eternal abode,
With mourners all around in the street.--
Before the silver cord snaps
And the golden bowl crashes,
The jar is shattered at the spring,
And the jug is smashed at the cistern.
And the dust returns to the ground
As it was,
And the lifebreath retuns to God
Who bestowed it.
Utter futility--said Koheleth--
All is futile.

   A further word: Because Koheleth was a sage, he continued to instruct people. He listened to and tested the soundness of many maxims. Koheleth sought to discover useful sayings and recorded genuinely truthful sayings. The sayings of the wise are like goads, like nails fixed in prodding sticks. They were given by one Shepard.
    A further word: Against them, my son, be warned!
The making of many books is without limit
And much study is wearying of the flesh.

   The sum of the matter, when all is said and done: Revere God and observe His commandments! For this applies to all mankind: that God will call every creature to account for everything unknown, be it good or bad.
   The sum of the matter, when all is said and done: Revere God and observe his commandments!   For this applies to all mankind.

Montana Mark

2010-01-21T12:26:00.000-07:00

Finally seen my pain management dr. yesterday....He looked at me back xrays for 2-3 minutes said I might need surgery....whatever....I'd rather suck on pain medication the rest of my life than let them operate on me...nearly every one I ever meet who has one wished they hadn't. 7-8 xrays of my me than ordered another round of MRI's @ about 1,000 a pop. I told him these records existed but somebody has to pay for that big machine in the back. After telling me to strip she (the nurse) pulled out a ragged dirty pair of gym shorts out of her desk drawer and told me to put them on. I told I wasnt putting them on they were filthy. She got me a new pair and then walked me barefoot from one end of the building to the other w/ just these shorts on in front of 10 or so people...I am thinking to myself...Only in Montana...I have a major germ phobia (I did'nt even shake the dr.'s hand but offered him the knuckle bump...which he understood). Walking across that clinic barefoot I wonder if these people have heard of staff infection.....Then when I tried to email them the records that already existed which I obtained from SSI via CD, they tell me they do not give out email addresses and the clinic itself has no email address.....They are the largest Orthopedic Clinic in this town w. half dozen dr.'s. Eventhough he gave me some decent pain mediacation and plenty of it, I think I am going to find a modern dr...

Why I Love Montana

2010-01-10T08:13:00.001-07:00

Big Blue Beat Down

2009-12-23T07:26:00.000-07:00

My Dell i1545 Laptop has a great Chess Game. I won the first 2 out of 3 on beginner setting than cranked it all way to 10 Grand Master setting and beat the thing first time...took me two weeks cause every 3-4 moves I'd turn it off cause it is exhausting and I knew I needed to be fresh...I knew I had the computer on the ropes when the computer kept taking a lot of time to move and the internal fan would kick on....wow! I knew I was a good player but damn!!!! Now I gotta go do it again to make sure it wasnt a fluke....I never played anyone who was as agressive as this beast was!!! Played just like me! When u get them on the ground they never get up!! Stomped the piss out of 'em. With the first move (white) keep 'em on the defense reacting to what I do....Twice this thing hit me out of left field that rocked me and told me this is serious competition...Gonna start a new game this morning....

Dude Died from Lack of Understanding Job 38(I gotta look up cite)

2009-12-19T18:51:00.007-07:00

That's gotta hurt. So this is where the King is hold up for the winter while I get my $ right. Looking at first week of January if weather looks good. Sure glad I didnt leave 1st of month as planed. Historic snowstorms south of here in AZ and NM, then torrential rains throughout South East and now Mid Atlantic's slammed. I got it made here anyway. Got my Medicade card the other day, gotta get glasses and my grill fixed.

Just finnished reading the Book of Job. Almost as scarry (hoary Antiquity) as reading Ezekiel...because it's visions. I also knew Job is considered one of the most important books in the Bible and have tried to read it several times in my life but always got hung up on some phrase or implication. I now know it is like building a wall Isaiah or Jeremiah talked about brick by brick. If I had not started at page One of Genesis it is impossible to understand. Because it will mention some person or place that if u don't know, the whole sentence or parahraph dosent make sense...probably like a lot of things you gotta start from the start. Job turned out to be complicated but the text wasn't difficult, but is very ambigous. My research suggest it is not about pain and suffering and that God is indeed in charge of the Universe and that cosmic anarchy cannot explain Job's unjust suffering. Although suffering it turns out is a very good thing as I suspected: Eliphaz spouts the conventional wisdom that good people prosper and do not suffer; suffering should be welcomed as God's way of diciplining a person, as in Proverbs 3.12, it is proof of divine love.

Job wasn't have none of that and instead relied upon his visions/dreams

We Could Be Famous: Checkered Past Comes Full Circle

2009-12-06T10:49:00.000-07:00

We Could Be Famous: Checkered Past Comes Full Circle

The King on the Road

2009-12-01T14:35:00.001-07:00

The King has a Ramblin Bone

2009-12-01T11:28:00.001-07:00

Gonna go live on the beach in Bilox Gulfport hiking the beach, fishing and camping until the spring when I will return to Montana. Gotta a rideshare post on craigslist.org Almost gotta everything in order although i am leaving a major good thing here in Helena but I gotta get out and be on the beach like when I was a kid. 26 miles of white sandy beach's, beautiful sunsets, and after Katrina you can eat the seafood.... Somebody hook me up. I'll pay half the gas and more for nice ride call or email 406-449-7229 or markamania2002@yahoo.com

I really want to bring my mountain bike (weighs 27 lbs)

ps God travel's in cognito.

Montana Still Rocks

2009-11-16T13:39:00.000-07:00

Everything going good

2009-11-16T13:32:00.000-07:00

Love this Town But Biloxi's call'n?

The King is Still Rolling

2009-11-16T13:24:00.000-07:00

Had to post something...all's well in paradise...

Riding my bike to Gates of the Mountain, Townsend or Marysville to see old mining towns...

2009-10-16T12:11:00.000-07:00

I love this picture...came with my new dell 1545 win vista..

beautiful weather 35-70....pictures when I get back...mark

Bike Ride

2009-09-30T11:14:00.000-07:00

Back Roads of Montana on a Bicycle

2009-09-30T11:08:00.000-07:00

Pictures as promised....probably lost 5 pounds I hope.....can't think of anything I'd rather be doing than riding my bicyle on the back roads of montana....Helena to Townsend probably 30 mileseach way...I rode out of Townsend into a brisk head wind and stuck my thumb out 5-6 miles out of town. County road worker from Bozeman driving a new white Silvardo picked me up in less than ten minuts....5-6 hour brutal bike ride or a 15 minute ride block from Burley's.....Riding into the wind takes all the fun out of it allthough you actually will get used to afte a few hours.....my legs are fine and ready for another ride; gottta find some more old abandoned mines or ghost towns.....
I ate breakfast at that place. Had the worst breakfast bis ever encountered...Sysco bottom of the line brand...ah, Schwann's Southern Bisquits at least!!!

New Pics soon

2009-09-23T10:56:00.000-07:00

riding my bike out to Montana City, Montana and will take a lot of pics. Heading out now, back this evening...

Escaping poverty

2009-09-13T14:36:00.001-07:00

Hitchhiking back from Livingston, Montana looking south to Yellowstone National Park

Truly escaping poverty seems to require a Will as stong as a Spy's. You have to disappear to a strange land, forget where you came from, and ignore the suspicions of everyone around you. Otherwise, you can find yourself right back where you started. Nicholas Car, TheBig Switch; Rewireing the World from Edison to Google

Finally Won My SSI Disability Claim! (Corrected)

2009-09-10T08:01:00.002-07:00

I got the decision a week a go but was afraid to look at cause I knew I lost. After researching for three days on what to do next it occurred to me the decison might tell what I can do, i.e., refile etc. BAM Right on Top 'FULLY FAVORABLE" back to 1-04-08! 22 months at 810 month (17K!), Free rent, free food, free medical and dental! I just won the fucking lottery...and it says chronic pain which throws in 120 hydros a month!!! For fucking Life!!! Most people have to file two or three times to be granted a "Fully Favorable" Decision. Im gonna take a picture of it and post it w/ my ss num blacked out when I can.
I did not think I had a chance to win so I am shocked! The old guy I look after had a 2 ton engine fall on him and hes been in and out of mental institution "Warm Springs" they call it in Montana, and he had a lawyer had to file three times.... No lawyer is getting a third of this!! They pay the back pay first 17 fucking thousand dollars!! And the judges decision says my inital onset day may be when i filed in June 05 and when down south after Katrina and had to refile. I might be entitiled to back to 05!!! 33 fucking thousand dollars. I attribute it all to Torah Study which holds that as long as I study I will be protected and good things will happen to me...and for those I intercede (pray) for. And because this is Montana where you can still get a fair shake...and if you got something coming these people want to see you with it...
So now I get to do what I been doing and want to do; Never work for another asshole again, Study Torah everyday, ride around the backroads of Montana on my Mountain Bike w/ sleeping bag and fishing pole, and generaly lay around and lick my nuts like the Big Dog that I am...you gotta love it!

"A Gentile who studies the Torah is as great as the high priest" (B. Ḳ. 38a)

2009-08-19T09:15:00.000-07:00

The highest ideal of young and old and of small and great was the study of the Law, thus forming a basis for that indomitable eagerness of the Jewish people for education and that unquenchable thirst for knowledge which still characterize them. "As the child must satisfy its hunger day by day, so must the grown man busy himself with the Torah each hour" (Yer. Ber. ch. ix.). The mishnah (Pe'ah i.) incorporated in the daily prayer declares that the study of the Law transcends all things, being greater than the rescue of human life, than the building of the Temple, and than the honor of father and mother (Meg. 16b). It is of more value than the offering of daily sacrifice ('Er. 63b); a single day devoted to the Torah outweighs 1,000 sacrifices (Shab. 30a; comp. Men. 100a); while the fable of the Fish and the Fox, in which the latter seeks to entice the former to dry land, declares Israel can live only in the Law as fish can live only in the ocean. Whoever separates himself from the Torah dies forthwith ('Ab. Zarah 3b); for fire consumes him, and he falls into hell (B. B. 79a); while God weeps over one who might have occupied himself with it but neglected to do so (Ḥag. 5b). The study must be unselfish: "One should study the Torah with self-denial, even at the sacrifice of one's life; and in the very hour before death one should devote himself to this duty" (Soṭah 21b; Ber. 63b; Shab. 83b). "Whoever uses the crown of the Torah shall be destroyed" (Ned. 62a). All, even the lepers and the unclean, were required to study the Law (Ber. 22a), while it was the duty of every one to read the entire weekly lesson twice (Ber. 8a); and the oldest benediction was the one spoken over the Torah (ib. 11b). Prophylactic power also is ascribed to it: it gives protection against suffering (ib. 5a), against sickness ('Er. 54b), and against oppression in the Messianic time (Sanh. 98b); so that it may be said that "the Torah protects all the world" (Sanh. 99b; comp. Ber. 31a). The following sayings may be cited as particularly instructive in this respect: "A Gentile who studies the Torah is as great as the high priest" (B. Ḳ. 38a). "The practise of all the laws of the Pentateuch is worth less than the study of the scriptures of it" (Yer. Pe'ah i.), a conclusive refutation of the current view of the Nomism of the Jewish faith. After these citations it becomes readily intelligible that, according to the Talmudic view, "God Himself sits and studies the Torah" ('Ab. Zarah 3b).

Got my new sd memory card..pictures soon

2009-08-03T17:36:00.001-07:00

The best way to perdict the future is to invent it

2009-07-30T12:21:00.003-07:00

Eric Hoffer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Hoffer drew confidence and inspiration from his modest roots and working-class surroundings, seeing in it vast human potential. In a letter to Margaret Anderson in 1941, he wrote:

My writing is done in railroad yards while waiting for a freight,
in the fields while waiting for a truck, and at noon after lunch.
Towns are too distracting.
Hoffer also took solace in being an outcast, believing that the outcasts have always been the pioneers of society. He did not consider himself an "intellectual", and scorned the term as descriptive of the allegedly anti-American academics of the West. He believed academics craved power but were denied it in the democratic countries of the West (though not in totalitarian countries, which Hoffer understood to be an intellectual's dream). Instead, Hoffer believed academics chose to bite the hand that fed them in their quest for power and influence.

Though Hoffer did not identify with "liberal intellectuals" and often criticized the radical ideology of many activists of the New Left, it would be wrong to characterize Hoffer's thinking as being "conservative". Similarly, though his writings were often likened to the centrist political philosophies of mid 20th century liberals such as Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., his thinking was not "liberal," either. Rather, his structural approach to analyzing and understanding mass movements and their ideologies often led Hoffer to consistently nonideological positions. As he said, "my writing grows out of my life just as a branch from a tree." When called an intellectual, he insisted that he was a longshoreman. He has since become known as the "longshoreman's philospher."
http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Eric_Hoffer

Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.
Eric Hoffer

Action is at bottom a swinging and flailing of the arms to regain one's balance and keep afloat.
Eric Hoffer

It is a sign of a creeping inner death when we no longer can praise the living.
Eric Hoffer

It is thus with most of us; we are what other people say we are. We know ourselves chiefly by hearsay.
Eric Hoffer

It still holds true that man is most uniquely human when he turns obstacles into opportunities.
Eric Hoffer

Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly in us, but our emptiness. The hardest thing to hide is something that is not there.
Eric Hoffer

Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.
Eric Hoffer

Retribution often means that we eventually do to ourselves what we have done unto others.
Eric Hoffer

Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength.
Eric Hoffer

The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a god or not.
Eric Hoffer

The Paleolithic hunters who painted the unsurpassed animal murals on the ceiling of the cave at Altamira had only rudimentary tools. Art is older than production for use, and play older than work. Man was shaped less by what he had to do than by what he did in playful moments. It is the child in man that is the source of his uniqueness and creativeness, and the playground is the optimal milieu for the unfolding of his capacities.
Eric Hoffer

We are more ready to try the untried when what we do is inconsequential. Hence the fact that many inventions had their birth as toys.
Eric Hoffer

We are told that talent creates its own opportunities. But it sometimes seems that intense desire creates not only its own opportunities, but its own talents.
Eric Hoffer
We have perhaps a natural fear of ends. We would rather be always on the way than arrive. Given the means, we hang on to them and often forget the ends.
Eric Hoffer
We lie the loudest when we lie to ourselves.
Eric Hoffer
When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.
Eric Hoffer
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
Eric Hoffer

The poor on the borderline of starvation live purposeful lives. To be engaged in a desperate struggle for food and shelter is to be wholly free from a sense of futility.
Eric Hoffer, "The True Believer", 1951
A preoccupation with the future not only prevents us from seeing the present as it is but often prompts us to rearrange the past.
Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind, 1954
www.hopepubs.com/HofferBooks.htm

It is when power is wedded to chronic fear that it becomes formidable.
Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind, 1954

Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many..

2009-07-30T12:09:00.002-07:00

I haven't figured out a better post format....these are just people I come across in my studies and I want to read again and again so I save them here
Abraham Joshua Heschel (January 11, 1907 – December 23, 1972) was a Warsaw-born American rabbi and one of the leading Jewish theologians of the 20th century.
"Wonder rather than doubt is the root of all knowledge."
"A religious man is a person who holds God and man in one thought at one time, at all times, who suffers harm done to others, whose greatest passion is compassion, whose greatest strength is love and defiance of despair."
" God is either of no importance, or of supreme importance."
"Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy."
"Self-respect is the fruit of discipline, the sense of dignity grows with the ability to say no to oneself."
"Life without commitment is not worth living."
"Above all, the prophets remind us of the moral state of a people: Few are guilty, but all are responsible."
"Remember that there is a meaning beyond absurdity. Be sure that every little deed counts, that every word has power. Never forget that you can still do your share to redeem the world in spite of all absurdities and frustrations and disappointments."
"When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people."
"Awareness of symbolic meaning is awareness of a specific idea; kavanah is awareness of an ineffable situation.
"A Jew is asked to take a leap of action rather than a leap of thought."
"Speech has power. Words do not fade. What starts out as a sound, ends in a deed."
"The Almighty has not created the universe that we may have opportunities to satisfy our greed, envy and ambition." Commemoration
Four schools have been named for Heschel, in the Upper West Side of New York City, Northridge, California, Agoura Hills, California, and Toronto. In 2009, a highway in Missouri was named "Dr. Abraham Joshua Heschel Highway" after a Springfield, Missouri area Neo-Nazi group cleaned the stretch of highway as part of an "Adopt-A-Highway" plan. Heschel's daughter, Susannah, has objected

Grizzly Gulch Montana

2009-06-18T18:54:00.002-07:00

I camped my first summer here in Gizzly Gulch less than a mile from here in the Helena National Forrest..

Full on Summer in Montana

2009-06-16T17:50:00.003-07:00

Beautiful weather gearing up for the road, almost ready and my buddy sprained his hip and I really can't leave him if he can't get around...plenty of summer left.

Hitchhiking back from Livingston, Montana

2009-06-02T15:07:00.002-07:00

13 Days in a Montana Jail and I am a New Man!!

2009-06-02T14:18:00.002-07:00

Read all 12 Minor Prophets (Obadiah's only One Page long in some Bibles), The Book of Ecclesiastes (Twice), and now back in the Middle of Jeremiah for the second or third time..I knew I was a New Man and didn't sleep for nearly 48 hours when I couldn't wait to get back started reading the Word of God to guide me on the righteous path to God's Presence. I had the least serious charge in there and about half were prison bound and half of them probably really needed to be there..very high stress for them. I disappeared in my bunk with ear plugs and read my Jewish Study Bible andf prayed for every one in there. They looked at me like I was from a different planet when they did see me cause I just stayed out of the way cause it was crowded for 8 men in 20x40 underground metal and concrete bunker underneath the City County Municiple Complex, jail, fire and rescue, courts, etc.
Preparing a formal Complaint against unconstitutional pretrial jail conditions with the Montana Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, then the US Depratment of Justice in Washington, DC and then a pro-se 42 USC 1983 against them. Them hillbillys need a wake up call on modern justice and the humane treatment of pretrial and people like me just sitting out a 13 day fine. They will place a shoplifter in the cell with a guy going to Montana State Prison for 40 years...no classification, no medical, dilapidated, unsanitary, improper handling of US Mail, wait till I get done spanking there ass.....just cause I can.. they were really nice to me other than there deliberate indifference and wanton disregard for my health and safety by placing me in a Pit for 13 days with vipers. here's some pics

Another Reason to Love Montana

2009-05-08T11:51:00.005-07:00

Gardiner School junior high track team members warm up on the track as a bison crosses their path, recently. In the southern Park County town, elk and bison are often seen around homes and businesses.
Enterprise photo by Angela Schneider

Run Off By Bull Dozer's Again

2009-05-02T16:14:00.005-07:00

Bull dozer's and graders came within 30 feet of my tent....time to move again. That's twice I been run off by progress...

Dude who financed this church and the state capital's first night in this town was hoveled in a door way on Last Chance Gulch's main drag cold, broke and homeless.....just a few years later he found the largest gold strike in Marysville, Montana not far from here...and sold it in 1906 for 6 millon dollars...money ruined his life his only daughter tramped from bar to bar and he could be seen sitting outside his mansion on Benton Avenue with his head in his hands...they tore his mansion down but the beautiful wrought Iron fence is at the Lewis and Clark Public Library....just down the street from where is mansion once impressed...

Found this bike in the garbage....just needs to be cleaned up...looked it up on internet and it's worth between 500 and a 1k...probably clean it up and store it as back up...got like three or four tents stashed, 4 sleeping bags, rain gear...i been doing this a long time....in the biblical days people who left the wilderness to live in the city were considered lost....

The Mystical Life

2009-04-27T15:16:00.002-07:00

http://www.nytimes.com/1997/12/07/magazine/faith-is-a-rediscovery-unorthodox-jews-rummage-through-the-orthodox-tradition.html?sec=&spon=&scp=2&sq=simon%20jacobson%20rabbi&st=cse&pagewanted=2
Rabbi Simon Jacobson, a best-selling author who calls himself a ''yarmulke-wearing, beard-wielding traditional Jew,'' says the same holds in Orthodox circles: ''We live in a materialistic society. We have so many distractions. We are not naturally going to gravitate to that quiet moment of serene communion with God. This has seeped into all communities, even those that pray three times a day. Personal intimacy with God is what Judaism is about. When that's not experienced, everything begins to ring hollow; it becomes technical. Prayer without kavannah'' -- inner intention -- ''is like a body without a soul.'' Many people searching for kavannah do so privately, individually, in bookstores rather than synagogues or through small meditation groups and retreats. They are turning to the study of long-dormant kabbalistic meditative practices.

Jewish meditation has a long history, yet many mainstream Jews will state with conviction that it does not exist. That's because for most of Jewish history, the mystical tradition of kabbalah was passed on from master to student orally and in private. Kabbalah has roots in the Torah, but its practice originated among first-century meditators known as chariot mystics. After a long underground development, it flourished in 13th-century Spain and in 16th-century Safed, in Israel. Not until the 18th century, with the birth of Hasidism in Ukraine, was the complex system of meditations simplified and popularized, becoming accessible to the average Jew. And only in the past 30 years have kabbalah and Hasidism been smuggled into a largely assimilated Jewish American landscape.

Much of the smuggling was done by Rabbi Schachter. Born in prewar Poland and trained in the mystical world of Lubavitch Hasidism, he fully embraced the culture of a new age in America starting in the 60's. Schachter insists on both tradition and innovation: what is old will be new, but what is new will be sacred. In Jewish renewal, feminist prayer language complements mystical insights into the being of God; ecology meets traditional dietary laws in the concept of ''eco-kosher.'' The desire for direct religious experience, from what Schachter calls ''a first-person place,'' has led people to become meditators.

A first-person place. Perhaps, indeed, there is only anecdotal evidence that I and others like me exist. I returned home from my encounter with the Dalai Lama most impressed by his ''quiet mind.'' I didn't have one. My mind was more Philip Roth novel than meditation manual, filled with competing voices that argued and joked. Clearly, as meditation practices move from the margins to the center, there may be difficulty inserting an essentially inward and introspective practice into American Jewish secular style. This came home to me a few years ago. When speaking to a Jewish audience in Miami, I asked if anyone knew the Hebrew word for equanimity. There was a long silence. Finally someone called out from the back, ''What's equanimity?'' We all laughed, but for many Jews the search for peace of mind is serious and real.

Why I Am Free and Your Not

2009-04-26T13:36:00.006-07:00

Yeah, I live in a tent in the middle of Montana (God lived in a tent 2 Samuel 7.6),and ain't got a pot to piss in or window to throw it out of....I am nobody's slave; so miss me with the dumb shit: By studying Torah every day (I am technically past Torah as I am at Chapter 20 of the Book of Ezekiel (NEVI'IM)....where I have had to pump the brakes hard because if you are not properly prepared you might slip off the deep end of one of Ezekiel's visions..... tread lightly and never discuss what is revealed.....) and doing ONLY what I want to do which is to study the Owner's Manual (Torah), so I can be in my maker's presence and the only way I am going to do that is to stay on the "path to righteousness"....keep studying....and that is why I am free you are not: Because I am free to do whatever I want to do because I have no house payment, no rent, no car, no insurance, no phone, no bills and only eat after sunset and still Study Torah... I got a front row seat in Heaven
...when you ain't got nothing, you got nothing to loose....except my soul, and that's already been spoken for...Christ Lives

This is my Exit

2009-04-14T19:56:00.003-07:00

Beautiful time of year here...Gonna Head East this weekend on a little shake down cruise over to the Crazy Mountains and back...Been 2 years in this town; I havent been in one place two years since in as sitting in Marianna Florida FCI for I maxed out a 10 year sentence for bank fraud... http://freegeorge.us my buddy I left in there...Finally got most things in place..and need a nice ride to think about the The Book of Jeremiah I just finnished...the Broken Hearted Prophet...Got my laptop and high speed internet fired up.....more to follow...

Winter time rocks!!

2009-01-28T14:05:00.001-07:00

Loving Every Minute of It!!

2009-01-23T13:14:00.001-07:00

The King has got it made now!!! Only about 300 cases left to key in for my http://montana-winning-criminal-cases.blogspot.com

The King Feeds His Flock

2008-12-30T16:11:00.002-07:00

You know your cool when you can get a deer to eat out of your hand....
this is the most nervous animal on earth, next to a rabbit and squirrel...

-29 below in Montana and the King is still here!!

2008-12-15T16:30:00.003-07:00

Actually I spent the last 2 nights inside at a friends house... took this pic a little while ago... They love oatmeal!!!

Going down below zero this weekend

2008-12-11T16:07:00.004-07:00

We are gonna see how much Montana is in the King
some of these are right outside my new winter tent which is right next to Interstate 15 200 miles south of canada and 12 miles from the Continental Divide
which i have rode my Mountain Bike up twice (6 hours up)
The first pic is me studying the Torah which I do an hour a day....I gotta get to see Heaven!!

Is This You

2008-11-18T15:40:00.001-07:00

It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.

It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dreams, for the adventure of being alive.
It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the center of your sorrow, if you have been opened by life's betrayals, or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain! I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine and your own, without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it. I want to know if you can be with JOY, mine or your own: if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic, or to remember the limitations of being human.
It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself: if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. I want to know if you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy. I want to know if you can see beauty even when it is not pretty everyday, and if you can source your life from its presence. I want to know if you can live with failure, yours or mine, and still stand on the edge of a lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, "Yes" !
It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done for the children.
It doesn't interest me who you are, or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.
It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away. I want to know if you can be alone with yourself, and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.
by Oriah Mountain Dreamer
(swiped this off a craigslist women seeking men in Montana post)

The King's In for the Winter?

2008-10-31T14:31:00.004-07:00

Looking out my front door..
some deer I seen riding into town this morning
been beautiful up here for weeks; due for some bad eather a few days looks like...
I'm wrapped up tight, geared up and sleeping llike a King everynight I just di old school: outside

Vintage and rare sixties records I found make offer

2008-10-22T15:17:00.000-07:00

More Vintage records from Helena Mt for sale

2008-10-22T15:14:00.003-07:00

More Rare and Vintage records sixties records

2008-10-22T15:03:00.001-07:00

List of current records found

2008-10-21T15:47:00.003-07:00

Make offer at markamania2002@yahoo.com

Springsteen Born to Run 75 Double album
Springsteen the River
Beach Boy's Endless Summer
Hank William's Your Cheating Heart, 45 Sun record
also The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle,
Grease Soundtrack
Nat King Cole A mis amigo W 1220
Mack Davis Baby Don't get hooked On Me. 72
Liberace plays Rhapsadoy in BLUE\Chubby Checker and Bobby rydell, The Twist
Johnny Cash The songs that Made him famous SUN RECORDS SUN 1220
Fleetwood mac Rumors 1977
herb Alpirt (LOTS)
LONELY bULL
SOUTH OF THE bORDER
VOL. 2
NINTH aLBUM
HAIR 1968
The Best of Sonny and Cher Atlantic 1967
The Mama's and the Papa's If you can Believe your eyes
Dinah Washington A Memorial trbute
Lawrenec of Arabia Abba The Album 77
Dinea Ross Graetest Hits 76
OLIVER's Goodmoring Starshine
Ronnie Milsap 77
KISS Destroyet casablanca records ND LP 7007 1976
Andy Gibb's Greatest Hits
Glen Campbell The Good Time Songs
'Ol Waylon Lukenback, Texas 1977
Crystale Gayle Baby dont it make your
Willie Nelson Sound in your mind
Tribute to Glen Miler Coronet records

Vintage records in Helena, Montana don't know what to do with....

2008-10-21T14:55:00.002-07:00

Vintage records and rare records in Helena, Montana

2008-10-20T15:52:00.002-07:00

The King of Montana despite studying the Totah an hour a day has managed to find five cases of old records under the Original King of Montana Burley dahl, a life long resident of Montana been buying records since the fifties and even has two Sun record 45's of Hank Williams Your Cheating Heart and another about snow or something.
Got two more cases to go thru, would really like to see the Hank Williams go to Alabama but would like to probably get rid of the entire inventory once properly assessed. Got probaly 6-7 emails and got tired of telling everyone the same thing so direct them here. Will take more pics tonight...