Field Marshal Turkish von Turkenstein (Lord Commander, 1st Feline Home Defense Regiment) is taking his duties very seriously indeed as we gird for the dawn of the New World Ordure.
You will notice, for example, his steely gaze. Resolute, is it not?
Also, and too, the crumpled papers with which he has surrounded the Turkenbunker. No jackbooted Trumpetista can approach his position without causing them to rattle. Fear, fire, foes! Awake!
Finally, observe the collected Tolkien in the bookshelf. Instant access to comprehensive advice as regards the arts of war and magic!
Those last few moments of sleep before the bathroom light snaps on and a cat jumps on you are prime dreamtime.
So I’m drinking beer with Tom Waits and while we sip we’re wandering around his cabin, which is more of a shack, really, and with a decidedly M.C. Escherish tilt to it, and I’m apparently staying the night ’cause Tom rasps, “You know where the mattress is, right?”
And I ask where Kathleen is, and he says she’s dealing them off the arm downtown at some hipster hash house, and he wonders what that’s like, because every time he and the band are trying to wrap up a track it seems they get hungry and need a bite to carry on but even getting a simple sandwich from this posh beanery is a pain in the ass because the chef is always short some effete ingredient.
“Sorry, can’t finish your sandwich without my artisanal mayonnaise,” I quip, and we both have a good laugh about that and then the bathroom light snaps on and the Turk jumps on me.
And none of this has anything to do with the fact that the Electoral College votes today and with a little mercy, a lot of balls and a metric shit-ton of educated, far-sighted patriotism they could save us all from ourselves and deny Sir Donald of Orange his dubiously acquired electoral majority.
This would dump the whole hot mess into the fat lap of Congress. And the House would select some garden-variety-nightmare Republican to be president, and just maybe — maybe! — given the popular vote, the Senate would pick some run-of-the-mill Democrat to be vice president.
But being a presidential elector in these circumstances must feel a lot like being the maid at the Motel 666 in Federalist 68 Hell. We get to shit the bed and she has to wash the sheets?
No, thanks, honey, she purrs. I’d rather make a sandwich for Tom Waits. I know what kind of mayo he likes, and I hear there’s some beer left.
The light does amazing things around here in the afternoons, particularly if some weather is rolling in.
The Fire Tree was on guard late yesterday afternoon as I walked The Boo, Herself being unavailable for dog duty (heh).
Behold the recovery interval.
I should have been paying more attention to The Boo than to the late-day light and what it did to the neighborhood foliage. He was all fired up his own bad self and got away from me on a descent; the old fella is seized by periodic bouts of enthusiasm, and once he finds his stride he goes pretty good, especially on a downhill.
I didn’t catch the little bastard until just before Comanche, slapping one shoe on the leash and bringing him up short of St. Peter’s Gate. He’d never have made the corner at that speed and your average Duke City motorist makes the electorate look focused.
With camera in pocket and leash firmly in hand we ran all the way back to El Rancho Pendejo, where I had a fine chicken noodle soup in the early stages of production for a Saturday release.
And a good thing it is that we got some exercise yesterday, too, because right now it’s snowing. In other words, it’s a great day for a bowl of chicken noodle soup and a nap.
Climbing toward the Sandia tram on behalf of Adventure Cyclist magazine.
It’s been a deadline week, and that means drawing, writing and shooting a bit of video. (Also, ignoring the news, which can lead to nothing but trouble.)
Charles P. Pierce engages an Airbnb in The Neighborhood of Make-Believe from which he discusses one way in which we might yet be spared the dubious gold-plated presidency of Donald of Orange.
It’s not entirely unbelievable. While Der Trumpenführer may have powerful friends in Russia (Делайте Америку великой ещё раз!), he has made more than a few comparably powerful enemies right here at home. And given that the the swamp has its own long-established and deeply held notions about governance and personal enrichment, it would not astonish me to see the Electoral College hand the whole sordid mess over to the Congress and say: “Here, you deal with it. We’re off to the pub for a stiff drink or six.”
The House would then pick a president and the Senate a vice president, and then the fun would really begin.
Charlie cites Federalist 68, which says, among other things, that the Electoral College was intended to avoid just the sort of mess in which the Republic finds itself.
Nothing was more to be desired than that every practicable obstacle should be opposed to cabal, intrigue, and corruption. These most deadly adversaries of republican government might naturally have been expected to make their approaches from more than one querter, but chiefly from the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils. How could they better gratify this, than by raising a creature of their own to the chief magistracy of the Union?
Brother Pierce continues: “We are a month away from inaugurating a manifestly unqualified and ethically unfit man as president of the United States, a man who has lost the popular vote by nearly three million votes, who already is reneging on almost every promise he made while campaigning, who steadfastly refuses to be transparent about who holds the note on his finances and who is on his way to raising conflicts of interest to stratospheric levels, and who now may very well be the willing bobo for a foreign dictator.”
He also says that the matter “is the most stark challenge to a free people that has arisen in my lifetime,” and I agree. Whether we’re up to meeting it is another matter altogether.
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