Well, the cop has written the tickets. But this bozo knows the judge, so. …
Nevertheless, well done to all those who did the right thing despite the Flying Monkey Caucus jinking around the room, screeching like turpentined banshees and shitting all over the Constitution.
A special shout-out to Rep. Deb Haaland (D-NM), whom I have been annoying on this subject for the better part of quite some time.
Goddamn, this is turning out to be an ugly day.
Larry Heinemann, who was the surprise winner of the National Book Award for fiction in 1987, died Dec. 11 in Texas. He was 75.
Heinemann won the award for “Paco’s Story,” but I read his 1977 novel “Close Quarters” first, and it is one of the best Vietnam War stories out there. Not a pretty story, but it was not a pretty war. None of them is. It was one of the books that made me glad I missed the party.
He did his year in an infantry battalion, then came home, went to school, and started writing.
“I was not one of those guys who got home and went to their room and shut up,” he told The Los Angeles Times in 1988. “I know guys who the war’s been eating up for 20 years. Anybody who asked me about it, I told them. I shot my mouth off about everything — the whorehouses, the endless hatred, the ugliness, the real work of the war. It took two to three years of talking to get the story out.”
Heinemann got more of the story out later, in a memoir, “Black Virgin Mountain: A Return to Vietnam.” His hometown paper wrote about it, and him, even including an excerpt.
Upon his return from Vietnam, he wrote:
I felt joyless and old, physically and spiritually exhausted, mean and grateful and uncommonly sad; relieved as if a stone had been lifted from my heart and radicalized beyond my own severely thinned patience: pissed off and ground down by a bottomless grief that I could not right then begin to express.
So, still sore and raw from the war I began writing.
President Very Very Large Brain dictates a letter to Nancy Pelosi.
I hope someone wiped the spit off it before delivery.
Frank Berto has joined Sheldon Brown in the Great Big Bike Shop in the Sky.
Bicycle Retailer has a note up, as does René Herse Cycles.
At the former, Jim Langley notes in comments:
“Gearing always has and probably always will mystify new cyclists — and Frank, as technical editor, made sense of it all for legions of readers through his columns in Bicycling magazine. It can’t be overstated, the impact Frank’s writing had on our industry and sport.”
Condolences to his family, friends and fans.
The problem with having an Apple orchard is that you’ve got to tend to the sonsabitches when you’d rather be doing something else.
Like, say, making money so you can afford to tend to the sonsabitches, or even buy a new one now and again.
I have five outdated Apple products in heavy rotation around the rancheroo. Three need OS updates, one needs a vigorous cloning, and the fifth — well, let’s just say that it’s devolved to running Adobe Photoshop 4.0 in Classic mode.
And yes, I said Adobe Photoshop 4.0.
“What’s it all mean?” you ask. Why, it means that yes, yes, yes, it’s time for another thrilling episode of Radio Free Dogpatch.
• Technical notes: This episode was recorded with an Audio-Technica AT2035 microphone and a Zoom H5 Handy Recorder. I edited this hot mess using Apple’s GarageBand on the 13-inch 2014 MacBook Pro. The background music is “Asunder,” from Taylor Howard at Zapsplat.com. Typewriter sounds courtesy of Tomlija at Freesound.org. Emperor Palpatine comes to you from the Dark Side, while “Alarm!” comes from “Das Boot.” And “The G4 Awakens” comes straight from the 1999 G4 AGP Graphics Power Mac, which don’t need no steekeeng updates because it’s immortal, thank you very much. Lemme know if your iPhone is still working 20 years from now. But don’t ask me to work on it.
Mad Blog Media 