The Wizard of Ooze. (Behind the curtain: Stephen Miller, Generalfeldmarschall, Twatwaffen SS.)
You will recall that Professor Marvel, a.k.a. the Wizard of Oz, traveled by gasbag.
His very distant cousin in humbuggery, the Wizard of Ooze, likewise gets around on hot air, with an assist from other people’s money.
But I don’t expect we’ll see him at the 2025 Albuquerque International Balloon Festival, which begins today. Oh, sure, there’s a golf center at Balloon Fiesta Park, with a driving range and a six-hole pitch-and-putt course. But there is a distinct lack of screening foliage and even the most myopic of Repuglicunts could see him improving his lie.
The Great and Powerful Ooze might send the ICEholes in his stead (darn those bone spurs!). What a fine addition to the spectacle that would be — fats with tats in masks and battle-rattle snatching up brown people and stuffing them into locked baskets beneath unmarked black balloons, to be spirited away to Kansas or someplace even worse, flanked by escorts of flying monkeys.
But I expect those boyos are busy too, lumbering after nekkid bike riders in Stumptown or the more easily caught deep-dish pizza in Chicago.
Eat up, fellas! And don’t worry about the legs on the black olives. Ramón says they’re free-range. Organic.
A spokescreature for the Department of Energy said it had decided these projects did not “adequately advance the nation’s energy needs, were not economically viable, and would not provide a positive return on investment of taxpayer dollars.”
As one might expect, Sen. Ben Ray Luján, a Democrat, sees things differently.
“Let me be clear: President Trump is using his own shutdown as a tool for political retribution — targeting energy projects that create good-paying jobs and help lower costs for families. The president is taking jobs away from hardworking New Mexicans and jacking up costs for New Mexico families.”
The New Mexican‘s story wanders off to describe a few other effects of the federal-government shutdown on our fair state, from thousands of furloughs to unpaid salaries to parks left unattended and vulnerable to vandalism.
Well, the rest of the country has been left unattended and vulnerable to vandalism since Jan. 20. Why should the parks be any different?
“Will you look at the man? He’s a Freudian delight; he crawls with clues!”
Maj. Whiskey Tango “Foxtrot” Sterno was said to be “crawling out of his skin” as the Warfighter in Chief prepared to address the brass hats he has ordered to assemble like so many raw recruits, reminding us not only of “The Caine Mutiny” but also “Lost Weekend.”
OK, so it’s The Daily Beast riffing on a piece from the Daily Mail. Not exactly the Word of God. But I’ll take good news wherever I can find it, especially on a Monday.
Speaking of good news, the clock is ticking to the first shutdown of the federal government in nearly seven years. This has been the goal of the Repuglicunts for as long as I can remember, which hardly makes it breaking news. But this time, who knows? It could stay shut down this time, and the generals and admirals would all have to travel back to their assignments via private transpo ho ho ho ho ho.
There will always be money to blow shit up, government or no government. But I wouldn’t want to be hanging by my nutsack waiting on a Social Security check.
Following the news was starting to feel like losing a shit-eating contest, so I stepped away from the Mac and treated myself to a little expedition down to the bosque.
It was something of a whim, actually. I just grabbed the Soma Pescadero and without a plan in place took the Paseo de las Montañas trail down to I-40, rolled up and over the bike-ped bridge, and then risked life and limb riding Indian School and Washington to the brief I-40 Trail at Carlisle, which leads to the North Diversion Channel Trail.
But instead of turning northward as per usual, to head back to the Mac via Osuna-Bear Canyon, I swung south. What the hell? I thought. Why not? Let someone else gnaw on that shit sandwich for a few hours.
Ridden south the NDCT has an exit onto Indian School, which becomes Odelia as it traverses I-25. It’s the sort of auto-friendly shooting gallery that bicycle advocates call a “stroad,” with a bike lane, and drops past Albuquerque High School (pay no attention to the graveyard on your right). To avoid the equally dicey Broadway at the bottom I hung a left off Odelia onto Edith, then a right onto Mountain.
This is the same route I ride to collect the Forester whenever it needs a little love from the Subaru wizards at Reincarnation. But Mountain also winds through Old Town to the Paseo del Bosque trail.
Mountain can be a little sketchy, being a narrow two-lane shared with street people and gas-guzzlers. A seemingly endless construction project that I first dodged in June added a small degree of difficulty, taking me off the street and onto a series of sidewalks from Tiguex Park to the Albuquerque Museum. After dodging a dog-walker, dropping off the sidewalk onto Mountain, and crossing to the opposite sidewalk to punch the bike-ped button at Mountain and Rio Grande, it was smooth sailing to the bosque trail, which I joined just south of I-40.
The Rio Ground in fall.
Then another whim: Check the state of the Rio Not-So-Grande. Up the Gail Ryba Memorial Bridge I rode. Yikes, etc. Back to the bosque trail.
The cottonwoods weren’t showing a lot of fall color so early in the season. Just a hint of yellow here and there. No matter; just happy to be here. I brought arm warmers but never needed them as I cruised along at a pleasant skull-flushing pace.
I shared the trail with kindred souls. E-bikes, recumbents, mountain bikes, gravel bikes, even road bikes (how quaint). One long lean type on a flared-bar, fat-tired gravel bike ahead of me was riding no hands, swaying gently to some music in his mind.
They call me the breeze / I keep blowing down the road
Was he was thinking about ways to drag hapless strangers into unmarked vans and out of the country, or into court to fight some half-baked rap, strip them of their jobs, health care, and reputations, sic’ the thugs in his cult on them, or simply shoulder his way in front of a cluster of cameras so the rest of us have to look at him and listen to his bullshit? If so, I wasn’t seeing it. Just another dude on his two-wheeler, enjoying some fresh air between shifts in the barrel.
As I turned north off the bosque onto the Paseo del Norte Trail and headed for home I thought about how the barrel is with us always. We need a broader view than the one we get through the bunghole.
Me and the Pescadero, just blowin’ down the road. Trail. Whatevs.
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