Booted up

February 25, 2020

Bad ankle! Bad, bad, bad! Get in that boot and stay there, thinking about what it is that you’ve done.

Behold the latest in Empire Stormtrooper technology: the boot. Just call me Darth Gimp.

The doc I saw yesterday is a podiatrist and a cutter, but he didn’t see any pressing need to fire up the old circular saw and prescribe a piñon peg and parrot from Largo Juan Plata’s in Old Town.

Dude sez to me he sez, I am presently enjoying an avulsion fracture (basically a severe sprain with extra attitude) and it should respond quite nicely to immobilization (hence the sexy footwear a la Bootsy Collins).

We’ll meet again in a few weeks to compare notes. The doc and I, not Bootsy. Though I wouldn’t object to meeting up with Bootsy, too.

I liked this approach because (a) it reminded me of the spiel I got from an orthopod the last time I did this ankle, back in 1983. I was sporting a fiberglass walking cast, installed by others, that he considered an overabundance of caution. Questions of diagnosis, treatment, and masculinity were raised and examined.

Also, and too, (2), it means nobody is firing up a circular saw and murmuring, “He under yet? Yay, boat payment.”

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Posted in Injury, Technology, Things that suck | 15 Comments »

Foot, loose

February 23, 2020

They didn’t have any Reynolds 853 crutches with cup holders.

So there I was, JRA (Just Running Along), when my right ankle folded up like a cheap umbrella, only with an ominous crunch that said, “Try walking this one off, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.”

I’m no stranger to sprained ankles. Don’t know why. A rolled ankle is just one of those deals that keeps coming around, like acid flashbacks or “Golden Girls” reruns.

But usually I walk that shit off.

Not this time.

Oh, I had to walk, all right. I never run with a phone. And even if I did, Herself was in Florida, so who was I gonna call to come get me? Batman? I never run with a Bat-Signal either.

So I hobbled home, wrapped the ankle up like a fat burrito, and drove to the neighborhood urgent-care outfit for an X-ray, expecting the usual RICE advice with a sizable bill attached to lend it some authority.

Not this time. Sumbitch ain’t sprained. It’s busted.

So I drove home with a removable ankle stirrup, a list of orthopods, and the obligatory pair of aluminum crutches.

And can you believe it? Crutches still don’t come with cup holders. I had to fabricate that sucker myself with a big assist from King Cage and the USB (Universal Support Bolt).

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Posted in Bad news, Injury, Running, Things that suck | 37 Comments »

I got some wild, wild life

February 21, 2020

“Take a picture, here in the daylight, oh oh.
They got some wild, wild life.”

Herself had buggered off to Florida for a bit of R&R, and Field Marshal Turkish von Turkenstein (commander, 1st Feline Home Defense Force) was in his quarters, decoding vital transmissions from HQ (which appear on the underside of his eyelids), when his adjutant, Miss Mia Sopaipilla, bypassed the chain of command to inform me that we had a muj’ inside the wire.

Little fella — I know, I know, how binary of me — hung out for the better part of quite some time, touring the patio, napping under our bedroom window, and finally scooting up a backyard tree and into the arroyo.

Maybe his old lady was out of town too? Checkin’ in; checkin’ out, uh huh. I got a wild, wild life.

 

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Posted in Albuquerque, Cats, Home and hearth, In the neighborhood, Never get out of the boat, Wildlife | 12 Comments »

Stone him!

February 20, 2020

Whoof, dude, you need some Visine. You’re gonna scare the mystery meat out of your bunkie at the Graybar Hotel with peepers like that.

So, assuming Judge Amy Berman Jackson gives Roger Stone some jail time today, how long do you figure it will take Impeachy the Clown to give him a full, complete and unconditional pardon (and probably the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the helm of the Justice Department to boot)?

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Posted in Casual snark, Deep political thought | 10 Comments »

Random acts of radio

February 18, 2020

The mighty Zenith K725.

Back in the Day® it seemed some oversensitive jagoff was always shrieking at us to “Turn that noise down!” Or even off.

How little things have changed.

Impeachy the Clown and Porky Pompeo have it in for NPR because a couple of its reporters had the temerity to, like, y’know, report, an’ shit.

And they’ve started cranking up that tired old double-chin music about defunding NPR and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, because these fatboys can only punch down.

Naturally, this triggered me, because I’m as oversensitive as the next jagoff. Throw in the confluence of Presidents Day and Random Acts of Kindness Day, and boom: Before anyone could tell me to shut my yap I was opening wide to deliver another painful sound bite with the yellowing fangs of Radio Free Dogpatch.

P L A Y    R A D I O    F R E E    D O G P A T C H

• Technical notes: This episode was recorded with a Audio-Technica AT2035 microphone and a Zoom H5 Handy Recorder, then edited in Apple’s GarageBand on the 13-inch 2014 MacBook Pro. Post-production voodoo by Auphonic. The background music was cobbled together by Your Humble Narrator using Apple’s GarageBand and the iMovie effects bin. KRCC operations manager Mike Procell appears through the miracle of Rogue Amoeba’s Audio Hijack.

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Posted in Agitprop, Arts & letters, Audio, Radio, Radio Free Dogpatch | 20 Comments »

Oh, boy

February 18, 2020

No, thank you.

The Boy Scouts, bankrupt? And not just morally, either.

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Posted in Cheap gags | 12 Comments »

R.I.P., Charles Portis

February 17, 2020

“The Dog of the South,” by Charles Portis.

One of our best and perhaps least known writers, Charles Portis, has gone west. He was 86.

You may recall the name from “True Grit,” which was made into two movies (John Wayne and Jeff Bridges).

But the former New York Herald Tribune reporter also wrote “The Dog of the South,” about a former copy editor who pursues his wife, his Amex card, and her first husband with his chow dog, to Mexico. Being familiar with copy editing, the relentless vindictiveness of American Express, and chow dogs, this naturally spoke to me.

There was also “Norwood,” about an itinerant ex-jarhead trying to collect a debt; “Gringos,” featuring the search for a lost Mayan city; and “Masters of Atlantis,” about a cult based on the “secret wisdom” of that place.

His books were filled with screwballs, dingbats, and scammers, and his use of language was superb, particularly in “True Grit.” At times I wonder whether Thomas McGuane might have absorbed a bit of his style.

And yet hardly anyone knows him, or his work. He guarded his privacy, but the Alzheimer’s stole his wit.

A final bit of strangeness: Roy Reed, the reporter who wrote Portis’ obit for The New York Times, is himself dead. Another, Steve Barnes, handled the finishing touches.

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Posted in Arts & letters, Bad news | 4 Comments »

Sunshine patriots

February 15, 2020

Field Marshal Turkish von Turkenstein (commander, 1st Feline Home Defense Regiment), demonstrates his readiness posture for the press.

Herself has three days “off” each week, but the “off” part is short for “off her rocker.”

Yesterday she pulled a full shift with Herself the Elder (eye appointment, lunch, New Mexico ID, etc.). And today she attended the local Donks’ 2020 ward meeting (she is a precinct chairperson and narrowly escaped sentencing to the pre-primary convention).

Tomorrow she has to give me a haircut. Yeah, yeah, I hear you laughing out there, but it’s harder than it sounds, chasing down and eliminating rogue hairs on my vast expanse of scalp. Like mowing the lawn for someone who doesn’t give a shit about lawns. Why can’t a fella go bald all over at once, is what I’d like to know.

In solidarity I went for a couple nice bike rides in the sunshine while the cats napped in sunny spots. Tough work, but someone had to do it.

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Posted in Bike stuff, Cats, Politics | 19 Comments »

Let me hear your balalaikas ringing out

February 13, 2020

KC hipsters shake their groove thangs to the swingin’ sounds
of KCXL and Radio Sputnik.

I don’t remember what was playing on the radio when I was hitchhiking through Kansas City back in 1972. Number one on my personal hit parade was getting the hell out of Missouri.

Forty-eight years later, guess who wants in?

Radio Sputnik, that’s who. Actually, the Russian propaganda outlet has already landed, at three KC-area radio stations.

According to Neil MacFarquhar at The New York Times, Radio Sputnik — formerly Radio Moscow — is one cog in a state-run Russian “news” machine that focuses on “sowing doubt about Western governments and institutions rather than the old Soviet model of selling Russia as paradise lost.”

“(T)he constant backbeat,” says MacFarquhar, “is that America is damaged goods.”

Well. I guess it must be. It’s a hell of a note when we have to offshore our bitching and moaning to the Russians.

Can’t Alpine Broadcasting Corporation find some red-blooded, home-grown, U-nited States of America Americans to talk shit? I mean, I do it for free, which is about as cheap as it comes. Alpine honcho Peter Schartel has the Russkies and their stooges do it for him and he gets $27.50 an hour. What’s that work out to in rubles, or pieces of silver?

I don’t expect that KCXL plays many cuts from the early Merle Haggard catalog between swigs of milk and honey and preachin’ ’bout some other way of living. But if you slip Schartel a few dead presidents, why, I expect he might just accommodate you.

It’s a free country, but everything in it costs money.

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Posted in Assholes, Capitalist swine, Casual snark, Dollars and nonsense, Radio | 16 Comments »

Just say what?

February 13, 2020

“Recovery is possible?”
Not based on my experience with bicycle racing, it isn’t.

OK, I’m bent, twisted, more than a bubble off plumb.

I know this about myself, and I came to terms with it long ago.

But I can’t be the only person who finds this “dose of reality” amusing.

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Posted in Bicycle racing, Casual snark, Cheap gags, Drugs, Journalism, VeloNews.com | 20 Comments »

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