Halloween 2025 is dead and buried, but the boogeymen remain very much among us.
And now it’s time — well, nearly so, anyway — to fall back.
This is fine, for as far as it goes, which is not very. It’s 8:45 a.m. as I write this, the temperature is a brisk 42°, and the sun has yet to pop round from behind the Sandias. So tomorrow, once Daylight Saving Time ends, it will be 7:45 a.m. and I’ll have an extra hour to dither over whether I’ll need arm and knee warmers for the day’s ride or can just let it all hang out.
Well, not all, as in everything. One must consider the neighbors. Also, the police.
In any event, getting back one measly hour isn’t going to cut it. Not this year. I want to go all the way back to Nov. 5, 2024, this time to see a different result in that year’s pestilential erection, with the Republican candidate headed for the Big House instead of the White House.
Perhaps the day of reckoning would only be postponed, not eliminated. So be it. All I know for sure is that this timeline ain’t working for me. And I’m not alone. Hell, I’ll bet a bicycle or two that a critical number of people who actually voted for this mess would like to have a do-over, and pronto.
Where’s H.G. Wells when we need him? Lost in the dim mists of Time, more’s the pity.
He I know — for the question had been discussed among us long before the Time Machine was made — thought but cheerlessly of the advancement of mankind, and saw in the growing pile of civilization only a foolish heaping that must inevitably fall back upon and destroy its makers in the end. If that is so, it remains for us to live as though it were not so.
A spot of seasonal weather has rumbled into town, and thus the cycling is contraindicated for the moment. The gods are bowling up there and though I have three bikes with fenders, I’m not exactly eager to deploy them.
My last few outings have been on the coolish side, but dry. Arm and knee warmers have become part of the uniform of the day. Haven’t gone to tights, tuque, and full-finger gloves yet, but I can see that gloomy country from here.
It’s fair, as Thomas McGuane has taught us. (He has a new book out, in case you’re interested.) The fall to date has been spectacular, and as we know, anybody who chooses to live in a desert shouldn’t bitch about getting free water from the sky.
Unless you’re homeless and using an arroyo to hide your proud-ofs from the Chamber of Commerce street-sweepers. That’s a free ticket for a fast trip to the Rio, and it’s hard to hang ten on a shopping cart. Not exactly a day at the beach, as the fella says.
Speaking of street people, letting that orange mold run wild in the East Wing of the White House is like hiring a Central Avenue hooker to give a makeover tutorial to your teenage daughter. Or maybe it’s more like letting a roach design its own motel.
This we have money for. Head Start and food assistance, not so much. Any of you kids out there who want a bite to eat and someone to watch over you should probably sign on with the War Department, start sinking boats in a bigger bathtub.
Jesus H. Christ. Did the Heritage Foundation rewrite all the civics books when I wasn’t paying attention? Have the three branches of government become the Surprise Party Department, the Practical Joke Department, and the Fairy Godmother Department?*
If so, I wish the last would put down her knitting and do something nice for a change.
* A tip of the old war bonnet goes out to Major John Hay Beith, a.k.a. Ian Hay, via Robert A. Heinlein’s “Glory Road.”
Albuquerque shows its small-d democratic contempt for the royal pain in its ass.
O, the hate, terror, and anarchy were fierce Saturday at the No Kings thing down on Central.
We saw young and old and in between; placards, flags, and banners; bicycles, scooters, and wheelchairs; T. rexes, frogs, and Statues of Liberty; walkers, talkers, and watchers. The odd pooch delivered a few remarks. No, not me — actual dogs of various breeds and temperaments.
“Liberty, autonomy, equity.” Sounds good to me.
At least one drone was aloft to document the sheer size of us. I don’t use Facebook, so if this link doesn’t work for you feel free to blame that putz Suckerberg. The local blat went with “thousands,” so as an old inkstained wretch naturally I’ll accept that as gospel.
It wasn’t much of a story, but a crash shut down I-25 near the Lead-Coal exit just as the march got under way and I expect the weekend crew at the Journal was busier than Rep. John Block of Alamogordo, who, when asked to comment for no good reason of which I can think, immediately stuffed both feet into his mouth — no easy thing, even for a Republican, because his piehole was up his asshole with the rest of what I assume is his head, if only for the position it occupies at the top of his neck.
But I digress. We were talking about hate, terror, and anarchy, yes?
I saw one hateful sign. I’ll confess it made my top-10 list. It read: “Hey, Trump, I’m not getting paid to be here. I hate you for free.”
While we’re in the confessional, I’ll also cop to hating the “Hey hey, ho ho” chant. We haters, terrorists, and anarchists need more poets on the front lines.
Hamas never showed. Well, I remember when Dan Fogelberg didn’t show to open for the Eagles at Red Rocks, so it ain’t like they were getting a cherry. Instead we got Tom Waits, who just happened to be in town and available. No, not in Albuquerque — at Red Rocks.
I did see one dude wearing a black bandana as a mask. Could’ve been an anarchist, I suppose. Maybe just a victim of late-stage capitalism and fall allergies, like me.
The dude waving the anarchy flag, now, he might have been the real deal. Looked to be a solo act, which is a dead giveaway. But it was a really pro-looking flag, which implies some degree of organization.
“We don’t kneel down.”
I should’ve snapped a pic but you don’t want to be taking surreptitious photos of anarchists, even if you’re wearing a red Marx Brothers T-shirt (Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and Karl). That’s just the sort of shit an elderly undercover cop would wear. Yeah, that old dude, over there, with the yin-yang earring, Ray-Ban shades, and Carhartt boonie hat.
Mayor Keller was there, as were other political types shilling for various candidates. But mostly the crowd was regular joes and janes like Herself, Your Humble Narrator, and a friend and neighbor, all of us marching counterclockwise around downtown Duck! City, (nothing but left turns, natch), chatting and chanting, singing and dancing, gleefully asserting our rights as citizens, not subjects.
The only royalty we saw was a family trooping along wearing cardboard crowns from a well-known burger joint. It’s not for me, but hey, this is still a democracy. Anyway, the Burger King is miles better than that tinpot tsar who thinks he’s the big cheese. Cheaper, less greasy, and easier to dispose of once you’re sick of it.
Some people voted for this shit. I sure hope they like the taste.
And what did you hear, my blue-eyed son? And what did you hear, my darling young one? I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin’ Heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world Heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazin’ Heard ten thousand whisperin’ and nobody listenin’ Heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin’ Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall
The MacArthur people call it both “a sequel and a prequel” to the previous work, and it’s not a lazy bedtime read. The first pass through I found myself speedreading it, a vile habit I can’t seem to shake. It’s like driving the interstate instead of William Least Heat-Moon’s blue highways. You get where you’re going, but you miss a lot of scenery.
Now I’m taking my time and enjoying it more. Orange, a native of Oakland, Calif., and an enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma, covers a lot of territory as he takes us back and forth in time, from the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864 to the echoes of the climactic gunfire in “There There.”
With one eye on another orange tale-teller I found one passage particularly apt for Indigenous Peoples’ Day.
Opal Viola Bear Shield, who is on the lam for a number of reasons — no spoilers here, read the book — is giving her unborn child a Cheyenne perspective on dogs, white people, and bloodlines (the child’s father is half white, and a white family’s dog, Cholly, is on the lam with them).
He’s one of these mutts you don’t know what kinds of breeds are in him and you don’t much care because he seems all his own in the eyes. Well he’s only got the one eye, but it’s got more life in it than I’ve seen in some men with two. And I’ve seen worse men than those with no life in their eyes. It’s worse when they know what they want and they’re hungry for it, white men in this country, they come to take everything, even themselves, they have taken so much they have lost themselves in the taking, and what will be left of such a nation once they are done?
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