Exercising the franchise

Open for business.

Herself and I filled out our ballots yesterday, casting various rascals out and others in, then walked them up to the neighborhood Vote Center, it being a lovely day for exercising the franchise.

The joint was jumping, as it had been when I bicycled past on Saturday, the first day of early voting citywide. We arrived around 2:30 to find a parking lot full of cars and a line for the one-armed bandits of democracy.

This is one of the reasons we have our ballots mailed to us, the other being that while filling them out at the kitchen table we can have a Mac at the ready for any last-minute research into candidates, bond measures, or amendments.

Plus we can do the usual war cries without being shushed.

“Yeah! Take that! Off you go! Never happen! Eat shit! Back to the private sector where they expect results, fucko!” Etc.

Arriving with ballots completed and sealed, we can skip the queue, slip them into a box, and thank a harried poll worker for his/her service.

Then we stroll back home. It’s a 2-mile round trip, very pleasant on a sunny October afternoon. Gives the electoral process a small-town vibe.

Herself gets the MVP trophy for spotting and snagging a rogue party balloon tangled in the pathside weeds. We won’t have any bald eagles getting themselves entangled in that nonsense. Dog knows the national bird has its talons full with all these red-crested buzzards shitting in its nest.

Hummers and bummers

“Belly up to the bar, lads! Lads?

This morning we cleaned, refilled, and set out the hummingbird feeders for what may be the last time in 2026.

We didn’t see a single, solitary hummer all day yesterday, for the first time this fall, and we fear the beautiful little buzzbombs may have called it a year.

Maybe they stuck around just long enough to see that Combover the Barbarian didn’t win the Nobel Peace Prize for starting pointless wars, threatening to shove this and that up people’s arses, and otherwise jacking his draft-dodging jaw on antisocial media while his Secretary of Snapping Little Guys with Wet Towels in the Gym Showers livestreams the execution by firing squad of the Fort Hood shooter, who is confined to a wheelchair.

It recalls the scene in “Blazing Saddles” where Boris is preparing to hang a man on horseback — and his horse, too.

Except “Blazing Saddles” was funny.

Bike wash

Not a great photo, but it gave me the idea for the headline, so … winning?

Ah, October in Duck!Burg. The temps have dropped, the rain has stopped, and the streets are alive with the cars of eejits.

I enjoyed a near miss on a fast descent the other day. I was braking (and signaling) for a left turn when a motorist halfway-rolls the stop sign at the street I planned to enter, glancing only to her left.

Well, shit. I’ve seen this movie and I don’t like the ending. Couldn’t turn in front of her, as I could have had she yielded the right of way at the stop sign. And I wasn’t thrilled about the idea of ripping the turn on her right side, because while she appeared to be about halfway into a left turn I couldn’t see if she had the left blinker on. The right most definitely was not on. And nobody in this town uses their turn signals anyway, not even the cops.

So I hit the binders, come to a stop, and shout “HEY!”

Well, then she saw me, if the deer-in-the-headlights look she pasted on her face was any indication. I was signaling my turn, wearing bright colors, and rocking a bright headlight as per usual, but if you don’t fucking look at me you won’t see any of that Sammy Safety shit.

I’m not big on driver education, what with everyone being armed these days, so rather than doing a war dance in my broken-down old Sidis I settled for the Universal Headshake of Disappointment — left, right, left, mmm, hmm, hmm, you stupid, stupid motorist — and went about my business. A cyclist has to keep the Third Eye wide open and way out on its stalk in these parts. Periscope up!

Speaking of feckin’ eejits, early voting began yesterday and we’re looking forward to receiving our ballots via uniformed federal employee and casting the moneychangers out of the national temple.

Unlike the Swamp Thing besmirching the Oval Orifice with its wet Mickey D’s farts we do not vote by mail, we just get our ballots that way. Then we fill them out at the kitchen table, screeching blasphemies as though the candidates were dumbass motorists rolling stop signs.

“Yeah, fuck you! Eat shit and die! That’s right! Go get a job in the private sector, you Brooks Brothers butt-kisser! Oh, wait, you can’t, because the private sector expects results! Boom! Now, piss off! Die, die, die!”

Etc.

Then we walk our ballots up to the neighborhood polling place and thank the workers for their service.

This year the herd-thinning process will be a breeze because anyone still claiming to be a Republican after two years of Swamp Thing v2.0 is not only a taco short of a combo plate but a clear and present danger to what little remains of the Republic. Christ knows the Democrats are bad enough.

But we don’t want to be hollering like that at our polling place. We don’t want to frighten any fainthearted types from the other team who may be coming, however belatedly, to their senses. The Republic needs all the help it can get.

Water on the brain

“Good Lord, Holmes, some rotter has made off with the famous Southwestern Climate!”

Looked like a Sherlock Holmes flick in the cul-de-sac this morning: “The Case of the Missing Desert.”

“The game’s afoot, Watson!”

And indeed it is, if the game is “Who’s the dumbest man in the Senate?”

There’s always a thundering herd of whinnying glue-factory candidates in that august stable, but lately it’s a two-up horse’s-ass race between Eric Schmitt (R-Misery) and Tommy “Coach” Tuberville (R-CTE).

Schmitt couldn’t even pull off a “Gotcha!” against Jack Smith without stepping in it up to his flag pin.

But Coach may edge him by a nose — a big red one that honks when you squeeze it — with his charge that the friendly skies are full of furries.

Talk about game. It’s one helluva race when it looks like Ted “I’m Not Just Stupid, I’m Evil Too” Cruz might not even make the podium. It’d have Holmes reaching for the old iron butterfly and his 7-percent solution, craving mental exaltation.

Arise, ye prisoners of dehydration

All the leaves are brown, and the sky is gray.

The rain continues.

Clearly the gods have finally heard our sniveling here in the northernmost reaches of the Chihuahuan Desert. UnRealtors throughout the Greater Duck! City Metropolitan Area rejoice and sing “Hosanna!” Which is not a Gilda Radner character from Back in the Day® when “SNL” was still funny.

Anyone hoping to float the Rio anytime soon will still need 32-inch wheels, knobby tires, and hydraulic disc brakes for their rafts and kayaks. Nevertheless, arise, ye prisoners of dehydration, etc.

Raindrops keep falling on my head. Maybe with a little fertilizer I can get a fresh crop of hair started up there.

I went running in the rain yesterday, and it seems that I will be doing it again today, if I want to enjoy any class of healthful outdoor exercise, which I do. There’s not enough water for swimming — not yet, anyway, unless you’re suddenly awakened while sleeping rough in an arroyo — and since Herself works from home on Thursdays, if I should happen to make an indoor thing of myself she will find some chore for me to perform.

Anyway, running in the rain gets me away from the Mac, where the news is.

Jesus wept. The Squeaker of the House just shut the joint down and sent all his clock-watching monkey-spankers home after doing less actual work in the past few months than Mitch McConnell, who at least had the excuse of being kept alive in cryogenic sleep while RFK sewed him up a new body out of fresh roadkill and a couple prehistoric Trump Steaks from Natalie’s freezer.

Too bad. I was looking forward to watching that caravan of fools try to impeach Field Marshal Scheisskopf von Kegsbreath while he heaves and grunts through a few of his weak-ass pullups, stinking of cheap O-club gin and kicking his legs like a cranky toddler resisting bedtime.

That’s probably why Beelzebozo ordered RFK to rebuild The Turtle. He wanted to make sure the Senate had the numbers to keep Kegsbreath on his sinking PBR, if the House actually grew a pair, and if that meant reinstalling the old Kentucky roadblock as a collection of rotting coonskins that Dan’l Boone wouldn’t wear to a goat fuck, well, tough shit, Mitch. Die on your own time.