Crazyfinger

Sid Caesar (The German General)

This week's been one of those when you remember once again that the most important ingredient to living life fully is sense of urgency.  To finish what one started, to keep the focus, to keep the discipline...for some reason I am remembering an old Sid Ceaser comedy routine.  When I first saw it, way back when, I was shocked at how brilliant the routine was and how much discipline it must have taken Sid Ceaser to master it to this level of perfection.  It is comedy sure, but watch the ending, it'll surprise you...

 

"this game is rigged"

At lunch we were discussing how ass-backwards the sales approach has been this quarter.  I said, with my usual animation, "When you are falling from a 100-story building, until 50th floor it feels like flying." 

Over and again, I am amazed at how this business remains unchanged.  Yes we are a high-technology business, but in a lot of ways we are a jelly-beans business.  People don't like to hear that. 

Walking back, I self-consciously nudged Y. away from the curbside (yes, yes dear KT, I still remember the lesson...!  But I think she knew what I was doing by the way she smiled).  Convinced of what lay ahead for us, I said aloud, "We are in a flying phase.  And you know what, I am not exactly sure what kind...!  Scary." 

Before we reached office, two images came to my mind.  One a scene from the book I am reading now.  And the second from "The Wire," (which in my book is likely to remain for a long time the best TV drama ever made). 

Bao-yu and Aroma in Cao Xuequin's The Story of Stone, Vol 2:
    "`Now my idea of a glorious death would be to die now, while you are all around me; then your tears could combine to make a great river that my corpse could float away on, far, far away to some remote place that no bird has ever flown to, and gently decompose there until the wind had picked my bones clean, and after that never, never to be reborn again as a human being - that would be a really good death.'
    `I'm sleepy," said Aroma, unwilling to reply, for she had observed that his mad fit was on him again.  And Bao-yu at once closed his eyes and fell fast asleep."

And here is that scene, the last moments of Bodie.