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.