We used to train up there in the Nineties, when I was still racing, and from the sound of it the fire may have started near Black Forest Regional Park, where Team Mad Dog Media-Dogs At Large Velo promoted a cyclo-cross or two back in the day. Plenty of fuel up there, and with the humidity in single digits and the wind in double digits, you have a recipe for some very bad news indeed.
Herself and I saw a couple of Fort Carson CH-47 Shithooks whock-whock-whocking overhead toward the Forest this afternoon, but we didn’t see any buckets dangling. The Blue Zoomies are pitching in, too.
And this is only one of the fires going on at the moment. Others are at the Royal Gorge, La Veta, Douglas County and Rocky Mountain National Park. The Denver Post is also live-blogging the blazes — using actual live-blogging software, too, unlike our local cage-liner, which seems to be doing it the hard (and cheap) way while expecting the customers to keep refreshing the page. Spend some money, peckerwoods. Phil Anschutz has it to burn, you should pardon the expression.
Anyway, we’re just fine here, but sounds like plenty of folks aren’t. More as we hear it.
The known terrierist “Banzai” Buddy Boo, captured from my iPhone. (Actually, he’s more of a spanielista.)
C’mon — you don’t think they put a camera in that phone of yours so you could take cutesy pix of puppies and kitties for teh Innertubes, didja? Wave hi to your Uncle Sammy.
I guess I’m with Kevin Drum here. I just assumed that once the surveillance genie was out of its bottle, the ratfink stool-pigeon bastard would never get stuffed back in, no matter which crypto-Mooslim Kenyan socialist tyrant happened to be occupying the Black House. And thus whenever I plot the smashing of the State I make certain that I’m out in the open, safe among The People, far away from that snitching corporate stooge, my iPhone.
I do have one question, though. As a nominal journalist and underemployed rumormonger, I consider myself to be in the entertainment business. And everything I do — from writing columns to drawing cartoons to making prank calls to the Queen warning that the Irish Republican Navy plans to dispatch an armada up the Thames — is part of the Work. Shit, I spend more time and effort editing my emails than some people devote to entire magazines. I’m saying I take my comedy seriously, is what.
So my question is this: By data mining my phone is Uncle Sammy violating my copyright, and if so, can I sic’ the FBI on him? Seems to me I can’t watch a goddamn “Game of Thrones” DVD without enduring a multilingual series of dire threats regarding the high crime of piracy from the Feebs, Interpol, the Sûreté, MI6, the Mossad, SHIELD, the Illuminati and Captain Video.
I think the sonofabitch should at least be picking up part of my AT&T tab.
• Late update: More on this revoltin’ development from The Old Gray Lady.
• Ever later update:More here, praising the leaker, from The Atlantic.
We’re all about the sweetness and light here at Mad Blog Media, as you know. In that spirit, it being Memorial Day, we present “Other than Honorable,” a special report from Dave Philipps and photographer Michael Ciaglo of The Gazette.
I’d not read the series until I heard a report on it from Amy Goodman at Democracy Now! But I have now, and you should, too.
A bit of Doors trivia for you: The band did not include a bass player — onstage, Ray Manzarek provided bass lines via his left hand, using a Fender Rhodes piano bass. Bon voyage, Ray.
Mostly when the phone rings, I let it go to voicemail. There’s usually a robot on the other end, selling something, and reading it the riot act — to wit, Isaac Asimov’s Second Law of Robotics — is every bit as effective as shouting at the television.
But on Monday, I picked up, having recognized the name on the Caller ID. And that’s how I learned that our friend Ken Stauffer had died.
Ken and his family settled in the neighborhood before we got here, just across the street from the house we eventually bought. We shouldn’t have gotten along, I suppose. Left and right rarely do these days, and the Stauffers and O’Gradys would never have the same political signs decorating their respective yards come election season.
So what? The Stauffers were the sort of conservatives who put many a so-called progressive to shame. James 2:17 types who rarely talked the talk but walked the walk, Ken and his wife, Ellen, worked hard, lent a hand to those less fortunate than themselves, and raised three of the most interesting children I’ve ever met. Scott, Will and Margaret were neither intimidated by nor contemptuous of their elders, and in our years across the street we watched them blossom into fine adults.
We’d shoot the breeze and share a laugh in the street, break bread and tip a glass from time to time, enjoy all those little interactions that make a neighborhood more than a collection of boxes with roofs on them.
When the kids grew up and began scattering — Scott to the Army, Will and Margaret to college — Ken found a new job in Atlanta, and he and Ellen moved away.
The four of us went to dinner before they left for Georgia. It was the last time we would see Ken. His death at age 50 stunned his old neighborhood, where he is remembered as a dedicated runner and occasional bicycle commuter; a husky guy with a hearty laugh, who enjoyed jumping out of perfectly serviceable airplanes while attending the U.S. Air Force Academy; a “boyfriend” who perked up the little old ladies with his visits to the gym; and a devoted father who hoped his children would find lives they loved, as he loved his.
I spoke with Scott on Monday, and he was bearing the weight as best he could. He said the family had gathered around Ellen in Atlanta, and that he planned to write his father’s obituary, as I did for mine. Shortly afterward, on his Facebook page, he posted a photo of Ken helping Will get all dolled up for his wedding earlier this year.
“This is how I want to remember my father,” wrote Scott. “At his best, taking care of the people he loved. Thank you for all you did for us, Dad.”
Mad Blog Media 