We’re all bozos on this bus. Some of us more than others.
Ronald McDonald’s criminal brother Donald doesn’t exactly inspire me to hit the drive-thru.
Not in the traditional sense, anyway.
I wonder if the folks who actually do a job of work at this location — which was closed to the public for this campaign stunt — got paid for the day.
The union that represents food service workers called this dime-store clown show “a slap in the face to the men and women who work those jobs in real life and make a poverty wage of $7.25 an hour in Pennsylvania.”
What do you suppose would’ve happened if this Mickey D’s had been closed to the public if Fatso just happened to drop by for his usual — two Big Macs, two Filet-O-Fish burgers, and a large chocolate milkshake? He’d have probably told his SS detail to send the grunts to Gitmo and burn the joint to the ground.
Why, hello there, October. Nice to see you could finally make it.
Yesterday we enjoyed a chilly eastern breeze, which by evening was expected to pack a bit more of a wallop — say, 30-40 mph with gusts to 55, plus rain — and with any luck at all this seasonal weather will strip our pines of their remaining brown needles.
On Thursday I filled three 39-gallon bags with downed needles from the last blustery day after a friend complained that she needed 4WD to scale our driveway with a load of product for Herself’s eBay sideline. The bags filled our trash bin to overflowing with three days before pickup. I had to pull one back out to shoehorn a sack of kitchen garbage redolent of jambalaya fixins into the sonofabitch. The raccoons will rejoice.
Not so the deer, who have eaten all the class foliage in the back yard. They’ll have to settle for silverleaf nightshade going forward or start mowing the lawn.
But yeah, rain. I can’t remember when last it rained. Mid-September, maybe? That’s the most recent mention I can find in the training log. I described it as “a short, sharp downpour” that I just beat home at the end of a 25-mile ride.
This latest blessing from heaven started coming down around bedtime last night and it hasn’t let up yet. We might see a quarter inch before the second cup of joe, which, yay, etc.
I can almost accept that it’s 45° outside, and that the sun doesn’t show its face until breakfast is a fading memory, and that I may be forced to start wearing pants in the morning.
No, not that. Not yet, goddamnit. It’s not even Halloween, f’chrissakes.
Fall color remains elusive at the bosque. But it’s still a fine place to ride the ol’ bikey-bike on a Tuesday morning.
The 32-mile loop I did is about two-thirds easy-breezy like a Cover Girl. But the last bit from Mountain and Broadway back to El Rancho Pendejo has about a thousand feet of vertical in it. And since most of the climbing stacks up on the back side it sorta gets a fella’s attention.
As does the ongoing devolution of TFG. When the legacy media finally start catching on, you know that shit is dire.
I got to throw a rare double bird during a ride this past weekend.
Rounding a corner I saw a yard sign for TFG to my left … and then another across the street to my right.
“O! The Joy!” William Clark must have felt like this when he thought he’d finally seen the Pacific “ocian.” In honor of the Corps of Discovery I gave the placards the salute they deserved.
It’s little things like this that keep me on a slow simmer instead of a rolling boil.
As a longtime observer and occasional chronicler of our national political bed-wetting, I have felt compelled for some years now to watch and describe what appears — to me, anyway — to be a brain-damaged orangutan dry-humping the Statue of Liberty.
But damme if the lifting doesn’t get heavier every day. And I’m an old man, with a bad back.
So I lift with my legs. Which is to say that when I feel some crucial part of me starting to give way, I go for a ride, letting my legs lift my flagging spirit.
A bicycle can bear a lot of weight. You can trust me on this: I was a great fat bastard when I returned to cycling after a long absence, and that first two-wheeler had to carry a lot of baggage.
So have its descendants. But the tonnage these days is less Marlboro breath and whiskey sweat, more inchoate rage and existential dread.
That’s hard weight to shed, and not even the bicycle can get it all off you. But it definitely helps, especially if you try not to put the pounds right back on as soon as you get home.
• Pro tip: Try wearing a heart-rate monitor when you scan the news. When you find yourself surfing a hate-wave through Zone 5, remember that there is no Zone 6. Not in this lifetime, anyway. Grab a bike and get the hell out of the house.
The hummingbird feeders are going back in the closet for now.
The quail are laying low. The hummingbirds have flown south. Yet one bird remains, flying more or less daily at the elaborate altars to fascism that The Duck! City MAGgots construct in their front yards.
I prefer the actual birds to the gnarly old featherless talon I flip to the yard signs, banners, and flags of the FreeDummies as I bicycle past their fauxdobe compounds in the foothills. Simultaneously a departure from and a riff on the traditional Halloween decor from China via Walmart, I suppose — but I like my goblins a little less, y’know, real. Y’know?
Now and then it seems I’ve pedaled into some hideous Mike Judge-Tim Burton reboot of “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.”
Linus, who considers himself an intellectual but gets his news and analysis from Facebook and NextDoor, pesters Pendleton about adding a Kevlar “Security Blanket” to its line. He wants one for his annual Halloween stint in the pumpkin patch, just in case another assassin decides to have a go at the Great Pumpkin, assuming he actually shows up.
Charlie Brown is an “independent” (unless you count Social Security and Medicare). It’s a convenient political fiction that means he hasn’t got the stones to put a “Pumpkin 2024” sign in his yard for fear of offending the Little Red-Haired Girl, who has long since married someone with a job and a future.
Not so Schroeder, the lone clone of an unrepentant Nazi who fled Germany as the Allies closed in; he plays “The Horst Wessel Song” on a toy piano while gazing soulfully at a framed, life-size, autographed photo of the Great Pumpkin cheating at squash.
Lucy is now a brittle bottle blonde who’s “had some work done” to keep her job as a screeching harridan for Fox News. These days she kicks balls rather than snatching them away from Charlie Brown.
Peppermint Patty (field-hockey coach) and Marcie (librarian) share a one-bedroom apartment with a dozen or so rescue cats and not nearly enough ventilation. But plenty of joy.
Pig-Pen is actually Steve Bannon (because of course he is). He had planned a live podcast from the big Halloween party until the FCI Danbury warden refused to honor his “Get Out of Jail Free” card from the Goldman Sachs’ edition of “Monopoly,” in which all properties are Park Place and only poor people go to jail.
And Snoopy is an undercover K-9 informing on all of them to the FBI.
Mad Blog Media 