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.
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.
Is Comrade Eeyore strictly a creature of the hard left? Depends on who’s talking.
“There’s a lot of supposin’ going on in the immediate aftermath of New Hampshire,” writes Mojo’s David Corn.
Oh, yeah.
John Nichols at The Nation says Comrade Eeyore, lacking definitive victories and facing electability questions thanks in part to less-than-amiable press coverage, must move beyond simple sloganeering to make his campaign “a new center where Democrats, independents, and millions of new voters have a place. …”
Meanwhile, the talking heads who want those “new center” voters pretty much anywhere but Bernie’s place are taking heart in the rise of Amy “Minnesota Nice” Klobuchar and, to a lesser degree, in the tenacity of Mayor Pete.
Senator Professor Warren is now said to be sliding off the back by the same keen observers who ignored her performance in the Hawkeye State Hayride & Corn-Fed Clusterfuck®. If nobody covers you and your campaign stumbles, does it make a sound? Apparently so.
Daffy Uncle Joe is one step closer to that rocker on the porch.
And Mike “Stop & Frisk” Bloomberg still has a big, fat wallet and is looking to slap the shit out of someone with it.
Everyone seems astonished that the Democratic contest remains … well, a Democratic contest. Messy. Noisy. Inexplicable at times, with a smattering of candidates you wouldn’t elect to a school board.
But I guess I’m relieved that we don’t have an Anointed One this time around. Daffy Uncle Joe thinks it’s his turn, or did at one time, but he was and is sadly mistaken.
I’m gonna have to give Minnesota Nice a closer look. There’s something about her that rubs me the wrong way and I’m not sure what it is. Maybe she reminds me of a publisher I’ve butted heads with. There’s a certain smugness in her expression that says, “Oh, I think we can do nicely without you and your bullshit.”
And Mayor Pete? Can’t say I’m a fan. He seems a little too well drilled, and about half a Republican. I’d like to see him on the back foot, watch what happens to his confidence when someone snatches the script away from him.
C’mon. When you’re staring at this much screen you want a box of popcorn, a big ol’ soda, and a preview of coming attractions that does not include the honking 18-wheeler into whose lane you have strayed.
I have an ironclad disagreement with the notion of a multiplex in motion.
My argument is a simple one: If you want to drive, get an automobile. If you want to text, tweet, phone, Facebook, Instagram, eat, drink, smoke, shoot, or stream anything other than your own bad self down the road, why, get a sofa and some fixed location to put it in.
Our discussion of the Escalade Multiplex with its 38 inches of curving OLED real estate caused me to remember an earlier screed on this very topic, from the pages of Bicycle Retailer and Industry News circa 2014. For a change I cited sources other than the voices in my head, though of course they too were interviewed at length.
Rather than simply reprint the column — c’est ennuyeux! — I barked it into the old Shure SM58 and presto! Yes, yes, yes, out popped another episode of Radio Free Dogpatch!
Too late for this year’s Pulitzer for Audio Reporting, but hey, there’s always next year, amirite? Or maybe 2024, when the sonofabitch will be 10 years old and journalistic standards may have declined even further, perhaps to my level.
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 Shure SM58 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 is “Well Oiled Machine” from Zapsplat. Sound effects from Apple’s iMovie effects bin and Your Humble Narrator.
Mad Blog Media 