Michael Jackson seems to keep on being busily and profitably dead without my help, so I went back to work for VeloNews.com and did a few chores around the rancho between bouts of translating poorly from a French wire service while all our English-speakers fucked off somewhere, girding their loins for the Tour.

The garage now looks more like a bike shop than a toxic waste dump. I can walk from front to rear and back without barking a shin on something, and all the two-wheelers are hanging neatly from hooks, barring the Vespa, which has a prime spot on the deck, right next to the lawn mower.

Herself, meanwhile, got all medieval on the backyard greenery after a short bike ride. The June rains have turned the place into something out of “Platoon,” and it was getting tough to walk from the back door to the alley trash can without some vegetable grabbing you by the ankles and whispering, “Me love you long time, GI.”

The Turk, as usual, did fuck-all. Friggin’ hippie. Nobody ever told him that the revolution is over, and we lost.

I suppose I should lay down some snark about Michael Jackson, who like many an entertainer before him danced down that yellow-brick road only to discover that the Emerald City was an MGM sound stage in Culver City, California, a far cry indeed from the Merry Old Land of Oz.

Unlike the rest of the universe, I never cared for Jackson’s music, unless a stripper was dancing to it. If I remember correctly, which is unlikely given the circumstances, when the fabled El Rancho Delux Welcome Back Summer Party in Denver one year relied heavily upon “Thriller” to undermine the morals of the women in attendance, I was appalled; I either ate a bunch of acid and retired to the top of a tractor-trailer parked nearby to meditate on the pure white light of stupidity, or went to sleep under my truck. Those parties tend to blur together in what remains of my mind.

To me, Motown meant Marvin Gaye, the Temptations, The Four Tops, Smokey Robinson, The Supremes, Martha and the Vandellas, Stevie Wonder and Gladys Knight and the Pips. Michael Jackson and his doppelgänger Elizabeth Taylor, on the other hand, defined talent squandered in the pursuit of celebrity.

A casual glance around the Internet indicates that the seriously disturbed artist who segued raggedly from King of Pop to Wacko Jacko donated heavily to various charities when he wasn’t throwing away millions on silly-ass bullshit, feeding an endlessly rotating nest of traveling vampires who are much more deserving of our scorn than was the young black man turned old white woman. But who among us has the wherewithal to tell a clanging cash register to shut the fuck up, even when it rings off key?

And anyway, what the hell? The millions were Jackson’s to piss away in any direction he cared to aim, and that some of his income went to worthy causes instead of his own private Disneyland, facial reconstruction and lawyers is to be honored and remembered.

Jackson famously outbid all comers to land the rights to a ton of Beatles songs, but he apparently failed to learn anything from one of the simplest of them — “Money Can’t Buy Me Love.” He died more than $400 million in debt, according to the Los Angeles Times. Isn’t it a pity?

• Late update: Herself asked if I’d mentioned the passing of Farrah Fawcett in this diatribe. I have now.

Man, it seems as though every time I turn around, somebody is chiseling away at something around here — soiled tile, spoiled carpet, damp drywall, violated vinyl.

Right now it’s the refrigerator, which has an unspecified “defrost problem.” * Earlier today it was my left cheek, which lost a chunk of what Herself’s dermatologist described as a seborrheic keratosis. Think of it as a mole designed by committee.

The doc didn’t seem to think it was anything special, but she’s shipping it off for analysis, just in case. Maybe they’ll find Amelia Earhart in there, or Jimmy Hoffa. That gram of marching powder I misplaced in the Eighties. All that free time I used to have.

Nah. They’ll probably just find a bunch of money in it. Why else would you go about mining people’s faces, if not for gold?

Meanwhile, I have a bandage the size of a quarter on my cheek, right about where my helmet straps meet, so it looks like I’ll be afoot for a couple days. How novel — for once, a pain in a cheek that isn’t part of my ass.

* Turns out the defrost timer had croaked. The good news is, says the fridge tech, is that at this point he’s replaced pretty much everything in the sonofabitch except the compressor — and when that goes, it’s time for a new fridge.