The Turtle plays the old shell game. Original photo by Susan Walsh | AP
“I would certainly be in favor of allowing states to use the bankruptcy route. It’s saved some cities, and there’s no good reason for it not to be available … My guess is their first choice would be for the federal government to borrow money from future generations to send it down to them now so they don’t have to do that. That’s not something I’m going to be in favor of. Or perhaps they might consider marrying into a wealthy maritime shipping family.” — Mitch McConnell on borrowing to assist state and local governments.*
“What’s wonderful about the air, James?” “Very fresh. No germs.”
They tell me today is Earth Day, and indeed, it seems we still have one.
An earth, that is. No thanks to us.
Yesterday I bicycled out to inspect the property and it looked pretty a’ight from just below the intersection of Tramway Road and Juniper Hill Road.
It probably helps that fewer people are motoring pointlessly around and about lately. I only start the Subie every other Wednesday, for purposes of replenishing the pantry. Though I did take the Vespa out for a spin yesterday, too (sorry about that).
The Mad Dog Media Entertainment Complex, featuring a Toshiba TV from 2008; a Mac Mini from mid-2010 (right); and an Apple TV from 2012 (left).
Today I celebrated Earth Day by not spending $150 on a new Apple TV box. HBO Now is dropping its support for older Apple TVs like ours (third generation), and so it was either buy a new one; try AirPlaying HBO Nowto the old box from an iOS device; or use the Mac Mini to stream the sonofabitch.
The last would have been easiest, if the wee beastie weren’t running an OS from 2013 (Mavericks). That dog won’t hunt, sez HBO Now. You gotta have Yosemite at bare minimum, and either Chrome or Firefox (ixnay on the Afarisay).
So I burned a little daylight this morning getting all those ducks in a row. If you monkeys smell smoke, well, that’s why. Ook ook ook.
I’m no longer running because I’m apparently a fragile old fart, assembled from stale Olive Garden breadsticks, paper straws, and Tinkertoys.
But Herself is still at it. Denied her beloved indoor group workouts, she zips out to pound ground. Hup hoop hreep horp, etc., et al., and so on and so forth.
Me, I went for a brisk walk. There are worse ways to spend 45 minutes on a sun-splashed afternoon in New Mexico. Most of them involve reading the news.
Sometimes the spikes point up; sometimes they point down.
Gregg Bagni, a smarty-smart and one of the legendary characters in the old velocipede-propagation game, has channeled himself a bit of alien archy over at Medium, and if you are operating a business of any sort in these dark days — and even if you aren’t — you might like to give it a squint.
Quoth the Bag-man:
sorry there will be no illustrative graphs or bad power point presentations today
instead the simple observation that this 5 min of our lives everything seems to be “spikey”
The piece reminded me a bit of an old joke, one that became part of a folklore project during my college days at the University of Northern Colorado:
• • •
Guy walks into a bar (as they often do in these tales). He is accompanied by a drop-dead gorgeous woman of the female persuasion and a surly-looking little fella ’bout a foot tall.
Guy sits down, woman sits down, little fella sits down. Guy sez to the barkeep he sez, “A round for the house, please,” and pulls a hundred-dollar bill out of his wallet.
Barkeep sez to the guy he sez, “I can’t break that, got anything smaller?”
Guy sez, “Keep the change.” Well, all righty then.
Barkeep sets ’em up for the house, but before anyone can take a sip the little fella jumps off his stool and onto the bar, and runs up and down kicking all the drinks over.
“Sorry about that,” sez the guy he sez. “Set ’em up again.” And he pulls out another hundy.
Barkeep sez, “Pally, I told you I can’t break a C.”
Guy sez, “Keep the change.” Well, all righty then.
Barkeep sets ’em up, but before anyone can wet his whistle the little fella plays footy with all the beverages again.
This goes on for a while, as these hoary old gags will, until the barkeep finally slams his rag on the bar, gets up in the guy’s grille, and sez, “Lissen, y’mutt, I’ll set ’em up at a hundy a crack all day long and nighttime too, but I gotta know what the hell is it the story here?”
“Glad you asked,” sez the guy. “Long ago I was a lost and lonely soul, alone in the world, down to my last few drachmas, rummaging through the detritus at this second-rate thrift store looking for items I might buy cheap and sell dear, when I found this old lamp. It spoke to me for some reason, so I spent my last sou on it and fetched it back to my shack.
“Well sir, I started in rubbing the dust and whatnot off of it and lo and behold! A genie appeared! And as is the custom, he granted me three wishes.”
“And these were?” grunted the barkeep.
“Well, first, I wished for the most beautiful woman in the world to be my constant companion,” our man replied, pointing at the knockout parked on the stool to his left. “And here she is.”
“So she is,” admitted the barkeep. “And?”
“Second, I wished that every time I opened my wallet, there would be a fresh crisp hundred-dollar bill inside. And as you see?” He opened the wallet and therein resided a lone Benjamin, seemingly fresh from the Mint.
“Blimey,” expostulated the barkeep. “Curiouser and curiouser. But where does the little guy come in?”
“Ah,” says the guy, gesturing to his right. “Well, my third wish was for a 12-inch prick. And there he is.”
The American attention span, ordinarily measured in nanoseconds, is fraying around its all-too-short edges as the walls start closing in on the homebound.
Relief payments have gone walkabout. The SBA ran out of money to loan. And almost no unemployment aid has made it to the self-employed.
Is patience a luxury we can’t afford, or a necessity we can’t live without?
For some folks, it’s just one more thing that they’ve run out of, like beer, beans, and buttwipe. But Your Humble Narrator still has a personal stash, and if you can bear about six more minutes of social distancing, he’ll let you have a little taste.
• Technical notes: This episode was recorded with an Audio-Technica ATR2100-USB mic and Rogue Amoeba’s nifty little app Piezo. The trail-walking portion was recorded on a Tascam DR-10L. Editing was as usual, using GarageBand on a 2014 MacBook Pro. The background music is “Easy Day” by Kevin MacLeod, taken from the YouTube audio library, as was the angry crowd. The squeaky bike is from jamesrodavidson at Freesound.org. The yappi corgis are likewise from the YouTube. The Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote are, of course, from the glory days of animation at Warner Bros. And the centurion calls us weird from “Monty Python’s Life of Brian.”
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