Worst. Garage sale. Ever.

Epstein files. Help yourselves.

“If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit.”

This is the first thing one learns in law school. Or so it seems to me, anyway.

And it dollars up on the hoof right smart, too.

You may think of Jeffrey as just another wrinkled weenie on the roller grill in the Devil’s 7-Eleven, but lawyers have been dining out on him for years, and the feast ain’t over yet.

The lawyers in Congress have demanded that his files be released, and the lawyers in the Justice Department have been (and still are) cherry-picking them with a liberal application of the black Magic Marker, which means the elected ambulance-chasers may bring obstruction-of-justice charges, contempt charges, or even impeachments, which would cause the executive shysters to hire top-shelf mouthpieces of their own, and you didn’t exactly have to be brilliant to see this bullshit coming, though you do have to foot the bill.

Merry Christmas. No, don’t unwrap that box. We’ve got the receipts, but they won’t take it back.

Winter shows its teeth

Where my cross-country skis at?

The bad thing about snow is it keeps me indoors, where the news is.

The good thing about snow is it gives me something else to shovel.

We got a couple-three inches of the white stuff here yesterday, about double the official tally at the airport (which is stupid, because I don’t know anybody who lives at the airport).

It started falling overnight. This I know because the Cold Moon reflecting off the accumulation in the back yard blasted me out of a sound sleep around 2 a.m. I howled at it, briefly, then drifted back into a fitful drowse that ended at stupid-thirty, when I had to drag ass out of the sack and shovel the Driveway of Doom for Herself, who had an early appointment with the dentist and a 2WD Honda to get her there.

I got her half of the drive cleared without breaking a hip or throwing out my back, and she navigated the descent without incident, so, winning, etc. Then I went back indoors, microwaved my half-finished second cup of coffee, slammed it, and went back out to shovel my half, as I too had an appointment with the very same dentist, but at a reasonable hour.

Or what would’ve been a reasonable hour, had I not already burned some critical daylight freeing the driveway of Itztlacoliuhqui’s icy booger-snots. There was no time left for my traditional X-rays-and-cleaning breakfast of sardines in mustard sauce sprinkled with chopped anchovies, red onions, and feta, which keeps these visits short and to the point.

So instead, as the hygienist chiseled, scraped, sanded, power-washed, and polished, I was compelled to listen as she prattled on and on — backed by a soundtrack of treacly holiday ditties clearly penned by Satan Himself — about how lovely Herself is and how she was sure someone had made a mistake when listing her birthdate on the paperwork, with nary a word about the striking male beauty of Your Humble Narrator, his wrinkly old Irish-American apple cheeks aglow from an hour’s snow-shoveling in the frosty high-desert air.

Oh, well. At least it wasn’t news. Not to me, anyway.

Collateral damage

God of War Henery “Pistol Pete” Hegseth (major, National Guard, ret.). Apologies to Chuck Jones/Warner Bros.

When the going gets tough, the tough get going, and God of War Henery “Pistol Pete” Hegseth is no exception.

Left unsatisfied by (and roundly criticized for) sinking small craft in America’s Oceans® — including a double-tap that finished off a couple survivors of one such strike — the retired National Guard major and Faux News foghorn set out after bigger game.

And he may have holed an admiral below the waterline.

Not that he’s taking the credit for that particular kill, mind you.

Writes Stars and Stripes:

“Secretary [Pete] Hegseth authorized Adm. [Frank M.] Bradley to conduct these kinetic strikes. Adm. Bradley worked well within his authority, and the law, directing the engagement to ensure the boat was destroyed and the threat to the United States was eliminated,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said.

The buck stops where? Tell you what, grunt — uh, pardon me, admiral, sir — you don’t want to be on duty when that particular dollar lands in your lap.

Just ask Herbert “Spermwhale” Whalen, a major in the U.S. Air Force Reserve who flew in World War II and Korea before joining the Los Angeles Police Department. Speaking of a superior officer in Joe Wambaugh’s novel “The Choirboys,” the burly street cop observed:

“I always knew he was behind us. I felt him there many times.”

Horseshit and gunfire

Black and blue and yellow.

Black Friday? Not entirely. As long as you avert your eyes from the news, that is.

And from your email in-box, too. Jaysis H., etc. Everybody and his bookkeeper is trying to sell me something. Take a break, f’chrissakes. I’m still digesting last night’s feast.

Well … truth be told, as feasts go it was fairly light dining. Green chile stew, salad, freshly baked cornbread, and raspberry cobbler with whipped cream. Fake beer for me, real beer for Herself.

While feasting we watched a couple episodes of the old HBO series “Deadwood,” a tale of unfettered capitalism ascendant in which much of the dialogue sounds like Pestilence Piggy addressing the press.

In one episode a gambler and whoremonger growing fat on fear of and hatred for the government ordered the newspaper office ransacked, its machinery vandalized and shat upon.

So, yeah, ripped straight from today’s headlines. Art imitating life; horseshit and gunfire.

Before we sat down to eat I slipped out for a bracing 90 minutes on the Soma Double Cross, tooling around the Elena Gallegos Open Space and a few of its neighboring trails. Lots of folks out, hoofers and rollers, either working up an appetite for Thanksgiving dinner or sweating out the gravy. And no wonder, with temps in the low 50s, though there was still a bit of mud in the shady spots after last Thursday’s rain.

The DC is a good choice for EG: 42mm Soma Cazadero tires at 30/35 psi, a low end of 24x34T, and grippy IRD Cafam cantis for when shit gets real. Eight-speed bar-cons and XT/Ultegra derailleurs. The 54cm frame is small for me, but has a longish top tube, so I don’t look like a frog trying to hump a helmet when I’m in the saddle. The little sucker is really frisky in the swoopy, twisty bits.

I enjoyed myself so much that I went right back out and did it again today. One more thing to be thankful for. Like leftovers.

One big pile, no arrests

Plenty of room on the Group W bench. Slide over, litterbug.

The dump is closed, all the wrong people are in cuffs, and there ain’t enough SNAP in the EBT for turkey but there’s a big ol’ ham living large in the White House.

Oh, well. We can still sing. Sing loud. You know the words.