Dear You,

You Still Like Me!

Yeeee-hooooooo!

*echo, echo, cho, ho, o, o*

You can hear me shouting across the centuries.

That's the best news I've had in a long time.

Except maybe the news
that we have squirrel fritters for dinner.

No.

Definitely your news is better.

(sorry for the bad joke
your news has made me daffy
thanks for such a lovely letter!)

Think on it! ---
a woman who won't be conceived for centuries
is going to feel favorably RE:me

high five!

(squirrel tastes like shrew, only fattier)

A Bouquet of Flowers for You

the first ones to appear in the slush

they've been dead for 633 years . . .


I'm unprepared

They told us we wouldn't be able to communicate
at all from back here!
(I'm tongue-tied)


I'm overprepared

I've been using the 14th century silence
to cram my head with stories to tell when I get back!
(I'm too gabby)

apologies for both


I'm Tired of Being Cold

even with your back against a rock
a fire like this only warms one side of you
my typing fingers are fah-reezing


Utterly Foreign

Thanks for the news briefs, too.

Mind bending!

After being back here almost eleven months
2002 seems ghostly & fantastickal

the great towers fallen

fighting along the Silk Road

fighting in the Holy Land

Bent minds!

The holy lands I was raised near
were holy only to Native Americans
We didn't notice them.

Now Jerusalem, Bethlehem
don't seem so holy.
Even God might feel unsafe there.


Utterly Familiar

I personally know guys who besieged
the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem!
(back in the 1340s)

Bush-the-son
pursuing Bush-the-father's
personal vendetta against Iraq ---

That kind of shit
happens all the time back here!

Welcome to my world!
*rueful smile*


Mayday, May Day!

I wish you'd have been here
for May Day!

Rural country calendrage is still very approximate
so, if you missed it, you're still in plenty of time

Here's how to celebrate the good, ol' fashion way:

1) Dress up like your boss and imitate them
in front of everybody
(that's the fun part)
but, of course, they get to imitate you, too
(which is very . . . cough . . . um . . . informative)

2) Do unspeakable things with eggs

3) Get drunk and celebrate, with your lover,
a round of heavy petting
(it's absolutely forbidden to get pregnant until June
'cause one would be too big to help with Fall harvest)


Cluck Cluck Cluck

thanx so much for your concern . . .
BUT don't worry!
I'm not in much danger

We're exactly the kind of namby-pamby soldiery
that Nick Machiavelli is going to bitch about
in 140 yrs. or so

We're essentially Showy Blowhards
who ride around looking tough
gathering information
and doing our level damndest
to never ever ever fight

Our standing orders are to Run Like Chickens

The other free companies basically earn their money from:
a) protection rackets
b) ransom
c) negotiation

and we earn our spending money from that. . .
and our real money from doing something-or-other
that Regine's not allowed to tell us about

Anyway, they so much as promised us
we'll never have to fight


Here's Skip

Here's Skip doing his Regine imitation
a few days ago

Skip's Regine is right on.

Here's Regine

doing a devastating Skip imitation


Sacred Roadside Shrine
or Child's Sandcastle?

Who knows?

in a high-mountain slush-flurry this morning


Just a second!

Hey, I just realized that
since you're forwarding this to mutual friends
there are going to be
other people reading this e-mail . . .


let's you-and-me get out of earshot



You other folks are still listening, aren't you?

bug off


mmmmmm so much . mm mm m m
m m mm all the time mmmm mm
you mmm mmmm

Grade A-Choice Awkward Moment

Here's my nomination
for Awkward Moment of the Week, so far ---
one of the Goth Rock kids
(who constantly gripes about wearing blue
instead of black)
sitting opposite the Civil War Re-enactment Nerd
in his Union Blue uniform
and glaring at each other
over the campfire

You could just tell that the Goth kid
was thinking
"What a pretentious asshole with that uniform"

and the Civil War Re-enactment dude
was thinking
"What a pretentious asshole with her eyebrow piercings"

I just about spit out my food laughing


All the Good Names are Taken

Maybe I should call us
"The Showy Blowhards" Company

We can't be called the Witch's Company
because we heard (even up here in the mtns)
there is already a Witch's Company
that campaigned along the Adriatic
for Venice about 3-4 years ago
with a Female captain.
Regine was hilarious.
"That bitch! I'll kick her ass"

Ah, Marketing, Marketing!

At least we have a reputation for being nuts

How Big of Nuts We Are

We're such nut nut nutty knuckleheads

that we hid out in der frickinge Alps
in der frickinge month of Marz!

What was it like?

Let's put it this way

The half of us that were doing Regine's breathing exercises
didn't get frostbite.

As of today, everybody does Regine's breathing exercises
religiously
every morning

Frostbite is charcoal skin
surrounded by a delicate border of snow white
It comes loose in chunks

And we ate a horse

Raw

That's how nuts we are


Hang In 'til Summer

I so sympathize about your job!
it sounds horrible

Take me, take this message, as an excuse,

yeah I'm talking to you
for real

to STOP right there at work
or wherever you are

and give yourself some time to dream about the future

beyond your stupid deadline
beyond your stupid job

to what you really want to be doing in 2 years
in 5 years

Life comes first.


My job?
Even when I'm peeling usable clothes
off of dead people I go
"At least I'm not back at my Old Position!"

Hang in 'til Summer,
I'll be home in June, remember!!

(did I mention I'm tired of being cold?)

We'll weave ribbons around a belated Maypole


Your Correspondent
Berto Alto

P.S. Raw horse tastes like mountain goat . . . chewy