Archive for the ‘Casual snark’ Category

A federal case

March 18, 2023

Change in the weather.

Herself is putting the finishing touches on our income-tax paperwork this morning.

She’s refreshingly scrupulous that way. Even though the Repugs have whittled the IRS down to one half-senile retiree from H&R Block clocked in for 10 hours per week from a memory-care facility in Muscatine, Iowa, Herself dutifully catalogs what we’ve paid and what we owe (or are owed).

I really don’t mind paying taxes. That is, I wouldn’t mind, if everyone paid their fair share and the money didn’t get pissed away on stupid shit.

For instance, I’d like to see more money spent on food, housing, and health care for the needy and less chucked into gold-plated, diamond-studded, unreliably airborne shredders like the F-35, which Charles Pierce calls “The Flying Swiss Army Knife.”

But then I’d like to see a lot of things that will never happen. Hair on my head. A Moots Routt YBB in my garage. Adolf Twitler frog-marched to Rikers on Tuesday.

Yeah, right. As if. That last item stinks to high heaven of the manic desperation of a shunned kindergartner all alone in a corner of the playground. “Look at me! Look at me! Look at me!”

I wonder what his SS detail would do if the John Laws came for him, bearing chrome bracelets.

“Can we maybe shoot him just a little bit? We’re sure he’ll try to resist arrest, if Fox sends a camera crew. Oh, come on, just a few dozen rounds, no vital organs. We need the practice. He won’t let us go to the range. We have to bus tables and mow fairways for the son of a bitch.”

Fire and ice

February 14, 2023

Free water for the trees. ’Ray!

“It’s a winter wonderland out there!” Herself exclaimed last night.

“No way,” I replied. Last I’d looked, just minutes earlier, it was raining.

“Totally,” she said.

So I looked again, and as usual, she was right. Coming down like Chinese balloons it was.

The forecast has been something of a combo platter for the past few days, as the weather wizards try to cover all the bases (rain, snow, sleet, wind, plague of toads, bloody stones, UFOs, zombie apocalypse, etc.).

With this in mind I availed myself of a pleasant 90-minute ride on Stupor Sunday (48° and sunny). Then yesterday Herself and I enjoyed a short trail run (54° and sunny with a stiff wind out of the SSW).

That breeze — Yahweh’s postal service — was apparently what delivered three of the predictors’ prognostications more or less at once last evening: wind, rain, and snow.

I never know what’s going to be in these packages once I unwrap them — big box of nothin’ or visit to the chiropractor — so I got up way too early this morning and had another look-see.

Oh, goody. About an inch and a half of feathery fluff, but still some moisture to it. Good for the trees.

I broomed the driveway clear for Herself’s launch to the lab and skedaddled back indoors, where the coffee would be once I got around to making some. First things first, as the fella says. If I let any kind of snow sit on that north-facing black-diamond driveway of ours on Valentine’s Day it will stay there until St. Patrick’s Day. Maybe Easter.

And now, we get right back on that meteorological roller coaster (rain, snow, sleet, wind, plague of toads, bloody stones, UFOs, zombie apocalypse, etc.). Also, keep a weather eye out for smoke blowing up your ass.

Naw, it’s not another controlled burn gone sideways. Just Nikki Haley’s presidential campaign. I’m not hearing any fire alarms.

I’m tired

February 4, 2023

“Vhy don’t you admit it? He’s too much of a man for you. I know! You’re going to need an army to beat him! You’re finished. Fertig! Verfallen! Verlumpt! Verblunget! Verkackt!”

“Joe’s not quick on the draw!
“Won’t lay down the law!”
The GOP croons

But as the Chinese keep spyin’
Joe sends jets a-flyin’
And busts their balloon.

-pop-

Oh, no, there goes the barrio

February 2, 2023

Go go Rockzilla!

Rock on: This morning Rockzilla saw his shadow, which as you know means six more weeks of fiery breath, stomping things flat, and general devastation in the Greater Duck! City Metropolitan Area.

Blowin’ in the wind

January 23, 2023

The wind is shrieking like a House Repuglican
whose Koch Brothers rent check got lost in the mail.

God is running His leaf blower today, and my back yard sports more needles than the alleys around Pennsylvania and Central.

Speaking of the mean streets of The Duck! City, a couple state legislators did a photo op over the weekend, kipping in a tent at 4th and Marble to draw attention to homelessness.

A few of our local TV stations took the bait, because they are local TV stations. And while some might take offense that one story was peppered with ads from Vrbo, Hotels.com, and Expedia.com, I doubt that many of the unhoused were browsing the ’Net from their cardboard condos. No harm, no foul.

The legislators would not have enjoyed street life today, though I hear Oz is lovely this time of year, and Emerald City Airlines rarely loses your tent.

Meanwhile, there’s an air-quality alert in place until noon tomorrow, and anyone who likes their air regular instead of extra-crispy is advised to hold their breath until then.

The devil you say

December 27, 2022

“Thank you for calling Satan. Your call is important to the Dark Lord.
Please continue to hold.”

The photo above is probably not of Hell rising, but rather a reflection of the heat boiling up from the unwashed brows of the uncounted hordes of angry travelers camped out in airports nationwide, watching through reddening eyes as flights are canceled faster than mouthy white guys, enduring the endless repetition of tinny holiday tunes while on perma-hold with customer service, and wondering if their gastrointestinal systems can survive another Happy Meal that is anything but.

So, yeah. Maybe Hell rising after all.

A Muskrat in winter

December 19, 2022

Is that a well-digger’s ass flying south for the winter?

The furnace grumbles to life at 5:33 and requires exactly five minutes to trudge uphill to its planet-friendly yet unimpressive thermostatic peak of 65 degrees.

Still, this is more than twice as warm as it is outside, so I should be thankful. I have a furnace — actually, two of them, one for each side of the house! — and a great big bed with lots and lots of covers. Also, a house to keep them in. It has been the better part of some time since I begged a kip on a couch or in a pew, or shivered in a greasy fartsack under the topper of a pickup truck.

This momentary lapse into gratitude doesn’t stop me from thinking it might be time to consider sleeping in pajamas, or at least a T-shirt and shorts. Maybe a cap. Sweatpants. And wool socks. Sixty-five degrees is one thing on a white sandy beach and another in a dark bedroom at the foot of the Sandias, squinting through the blinds at the banana moon night-lighting the back yard.

Over coffee I note that E. Long Muskrat has yet to quit shitting in his newest sandbox, though his own survey — “Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll.” — went strongly against him.

While giving him the thumbs down last night Herself asked innocently, “Can we vote more than once?” She has not been locked out of her account. Yet. Me, I maintained radio silence.

It doesn’t matter, not really. CEO or no, the Muskrat would still own the Twithole and would have to hire some poor sap to run it for him.

That would be a dream job, hey? About like being handed a push broom and being told to sweep up the debris in the Monfort lane through the Big I at drunk-thirty on Black Friday.

Or maybe it’s more like being assigned to clean the hyena cage while the hyena is still in it. Before feeding time.

I don’t know why I find this penny-dreadful drama amusing. I haven’t used the service in five years. In fact, I’ve croaked nearly all my social-media accounts, save for LinkedIn, which I keep around like an ugly sweater I’m never going to wear, no matter how cold it gets.

There’s just something fascinating about watching the gods behaving badly. They always do. Gods have the morals and manners of spoiled children pitching a bitch in the Wholeazon Amafoods while mom tries to find the sell-by date on a plastic tub of organic baby arugula.

It’s not enough that the gods are omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent — no, they have to have our undivided attention, too.

It’s sad. But also amusing. For a while, anyway.

“Wow, this is an adult human being. Second richest in the world — No. 1 until the shitposting trouser stain started dicking around with a new toy without reading the owner’s manual — and he’s acting out like a hormonal teenager with a marble-sized nose zit and two left feet fuming at all the cool kids dancing on TikTok.”

Just wait until Orange Julius Caesar softshoes into the multimedia spotlight again today. His Lardship Musk Mellon Esq. will probably try to buy the Internets and shut them down.

I don’t know who’d loan him the money for that indulgence. Not Orange J, that’s for sure. Fool needs a new pair of size-7 dancing shoes.

Dine and dash

December 18, 2022

I’d rather eat than tweet.

This was my last tweet, almost five years ago.

Looks like I was ahead of the curve for a change when I flew the coop back in 2017. Someone should tell Elon to quit shitting in his birdcage and go to Mars already.

Courting disaster

June 24, 2022

Wet enough for ya?

The authorities have found a big, fat snake in Florida.

And they’ve captured an 18-foot, 215-pound Burmese python too.

(Rimshot.)

The big news here in New Mexico is that the Forest Circus has decided we’ve had enough monsoon to reopen the forests for fun and frolic. So if your idea of a good time is pitching a tent in a puddle of West Nile Starter Kit, cultivating moss on your north side, and shredding some soggy gnar-gnar, why, knock yourself out.

Mind you, this edict comes from the same geniuses who lit ’em up in the first place, so please refrain from celebrating with fireworks.

And pack a fire extinguisher. Just in case.

Finally, to absolutely no one’s surprise, the Supremes have croaked Roe v. Wade. This is your regularly scheduled reminder that elections matter.

Happy Mother’s Day

May 8, 2022

This one goes out to the Supremes, those muthas.