Your money’s no good here, and neither is anything else.
Mikhail Gorbachev has died and gone to Commie Hell, which looks a lot like Walmart.
Capitalist Hell, of course, looks more like Bed Bath & Beyond.
If I cared to visit a BB&B, which I do not, I could wander right on in with my face hanging out as in days of yore, and not just because there would be no other customers (and possibly no employees).
No, it seems that overnight Bernalillo County has switched from Condition Red on the Bug-O-Meter to Go-Anywhere Green, for reasons which elude me.
Oh, wait, just thought of one: The Labor Day Drive Far and Spend Heavily While the Gas is Still Cheap(ish) Holiday Extravaganza. Get out there and buy something, you sissies!
I suppose it beats hanging out in the castle with Prospero, waiting for the Red Death to come knocking despite the “No Solicitors” sign on the door.
And if worse came to worst one could always bunker up in a Bed Bath & Beyond, which has to be the closest thing to a sterile environment outside the Wildfire lab near Flatrock, Nevada.
But still, it all seems a bit one step beyond. Madness!
Tags: Bed Bath & Beyond, Labor Day, Madness, Masque of the Red Death, Mikhail Gorbachev, One Step Beyond, The Bug, Walmart
Mad Blog Media 
August 31, 2022 at 5:52 pm |
PO’G: With all due respect to your prodigious literary/journalistic, philosophical, and current event insights (not to mention cycling knowledge and experience that I don’t have), I must suggest that in this post you’ve tortuously connected some contemporary events and “news” click-baits to create viewer interest and/or pseudo-intellectual “dialogue” … or chosen to vent /exorcise in the presence of like-minded folks.
Thus …. if I’m any example …. you’ve succeeded! 🙂
Let your readers enlighten and provide further depth to the conversation!
Tip of the chapeau y sombrero, mi amigo!!! 🙂
August 31, 2022 at 6:38 pm |
Just riffing, JD. This post is a good look at how my mind — what remains of it, anyway — works. Or doesn’t, depending.
I wrote the lede (the first “graf,” in newspaper parlance) and the rest of it just appeared as though delivered by UPS.
I had wanted to say something about Gorbachev, being something of an amateur Kremlinologist, and also about the change in our Bug Designation, which seemed to drop out of thin air. I usually check the CDC Covid Data Tracker once a week or so.
This brought to mind Poe’s classic tale, which in turn begat the “Andromeda Strain” reference. And Labor Day was probably my onion at the bottom of the pot all along. How did it get to be that time of year again already?
Anyway, just having fun to no particular purpose. Think of it as a diving board for all y’all. Hop on in, the water’s fine.
August 31, 2022 at 6:56 pm |
PO’G: “Labor Day was probably my onion at the bottom of the pot” gets 5-stars on my review! 🙂
August 31, 2022 at 8:15 pm |
Let me think, for a second anyway. The stock price dropped again, so fuck a bunch of labor. Deep thinking, heh you hoser?
September 1, 2022 at 7:44 am |
Sack the workers, close the stores, bonuses for management. You know the drill. …
August 31, 2022 at 8:32 pm |
BB&B. Hmmm…that reminds me. We need new bedsheets.
September 1, 2022 at 7:55 am |
I think Herself has been patronizing Tuesday Morning for stuff like that. Tuesday Morning is the new BB&B.
September 2, 2022 at 1:41 am |
Can’t say, TM closed and left town in Garland.
August 31, 2022 at 8:47 pm |
What does it say that I knew what the Wildfire Lab was before I clicked on the link? Aside from the fact that I’m in the same age range as the rest of you codgers?
August 31, 2022 at 10:42 pm |
You’ve got company. And watch out for the lasers on your way to help deactivate the nuclear device with your key. Meme stocks frighten me even more.
September 1, 2022 at 7:55 am |
Great minds, etc.
September 1, 2022 at 5:48 am |
To show you how much I shop at the malls….I was dispatched to BB&B to fetch some cooking implement. But in their space was some apparel store selling hideous closeout goods. A clerk told me the BB&B had left over a year ago. I thought it might be proper to buy something for the information update but knew a turquoise jacket wouldn’t peel carrots worth a damn.
As for Gorby…..anyone remember the Specialized ad?
September 1, 2022 at 7:11 am |
Yup.
September 1, 2022 at 10:56 am |
Specialized. Figures.
September 2, 2022 at 10:04 am |
Wow, I managed to miss that ad. Good one.
September 3, 2022 at 4:35 pm |
Had the t-shirt. People would ask me “Who’s the old guy on the bike?”.
September 1, 2022 at 10:40 am |
The New Republic had an interesting story on Gorbachev.
https://newrepublic.com/article/167602/mikhail-gorbachev-death-russia-legacy
It seems that as long as one ends up doing a few good deeds before the daisies call, history has a tendency to gloss over the not so pretty elements of a person’s past. Perhaps though, the hardship of a smaller percentage is much better than the hardship (insert big mushroom cloud) of a much larger percentage.
I suppose if one bought new sheets, towels and stuff like that, that the visitation of a Bed, Bath and other junk would be an occurrence. But I like my threadbare sheets, holy(!) towels and miasma of unmarried junk. Perhaps if they added Bikes to the Beyond part, I might part the doors of enlightenment.
Regarding Labor Day and it’s spirit of, any good, prosperous business should not be afraid of their employees discussing unionizing. But the business needs to be honest with a potential union and open the books to show them what the business can afford. But our drive for unfettered capitalism infects the hearts of business leadership and the us-versus-them mentality comes into play. “Why should Rosie down on the floor making frosted cappuccino milkshakes get paid $22.50 an hour when I only pay my pool boy $18.50 an hour?”
Any of you old codgers with technical backgrounds or editorial astuteness apply to the IAEA? I understand that new hires get a cool new vest and respectable term life insurance.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2022/9/1/russia-ukraine-live-news-attacks-reported-near-nuclear-plant
September 1, 2022 at 11:00 am |
Careful you don’t fall out of a sixth floor hospital window while seriously ill.
September 1, 2022 at 1:30 pm |
You mean flying out the window from the Oregon psychiatric hospital don’t you? Cuckoo! Cuckoo!
September 1, 2022 at 4:53 pm |
Friend of the family lost their dad to the Bethesda 6th floor. Super-soldier testing with LSD. So many weird stories that you only heard cuz your dad got those crap jobs in DC that nobody else wanted
September 1, 2022 at 5:29 pm |
My respect and sadness of your friend’s Dad.
September 1, 2022 at 7:42 pm |
I was referring to Putin’s latest victim. You know, the stuff that orange julius would like to do.
September 2, 2022 at 6:55 am |
People seem to die around Joe Stalin Jr. Who’s in charge of airbrushing them out of the photos?
September 2, 2022 at 10:11 am |
I applied for the mass spec lab job at the IAEA laboratory in Seibersdorf once, as a change of station and to get out of LANL long enough to clear my head. My colleague at Sandia got it instead. But turns out that was OK, since under the new Robber Baron, LLC management at LANL at the time, it turns out I would not have been able to use the two years towards my retirement package. I’d still be slaving away towards the magic 20 years without parole.
Not so sure about volunteering to get in the crossfire in Ukraine right now. Bad enough getting shot at. Even worse when they might hit the containment building by mistake.
September 1, 2022 at 4:50 pm |
Capitalist Hell, of course, looks more like Bed Bath & Beyond.
But the crazy thing is, we’re rooting for BB&B, if only because they’re NOT Amazon.
September 1, 2022 at 4:55 pm |
In 2020, Sweden elected a former IKEA CEO as their new president.
He’s still assembling his cabinet.
(The exit is that way —> correct?)
September 1, 2022 at 5:25 pm |
It must be that the opposition party pulled a fast one on him and supplied him with the chinese language instructions.
September 1, 2022 at 5:42 pm |
SAO: Tip of the old chapeau/sombrero/trucker’s cap there, buddy! Well played!
September 2, 2022 at 7:04 am |
O, man. That’s a good’un. Hee and also haw.
September 2, 2022 at 8:05 am |
September 2, 2022 at 10:11 am |
Hee haw, and ho-ho!
September 3, 2022 at 6:12 am |
That made my day