Definitely a hint of fall in the air, and in the trees as well.
One of my brothers-in-law recently took a job in Florida — the east coast, naturally — and looks like the welcome wagon has finally rolled up.
No worries. As Hurricane Matthew came a-calling he evacuated westward to a town just outside Chez Mouse, and with any luck at all, he’s just getting his windows washed for free. My bro’-in-law, not Mickey. The sis-in-law is still up north, wrapping up their affairs there.
Here in the Duke City the mornings and evenings have grown brisk, but the days themselves remain stellar. I went for a nice hike in the foothills yesterday so I could get a little October sunshine on my head. And today I plan a mountain-bike ride while everyone else in town is milling around at the balloon festival.
If I want any gasbag action, I’ll check the news when I get home. Whoops, there it is.
Herself and I cycled over to the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta yesterday to see what it was all about.
Mostly it was all about RVs. Seriously. We didn’t see a single, solitary balloon. But we did see about eleventy-bazillion dollars’ worth of houses on the hoof, taking up all the ordinarily vacant acreage for miles around.
Turns out that we arrived between shows. There’s a whole lot of not much going on between 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. I saw more action during the last day of Interbike, f’chrissakes.
Still, it was a nice ride, exactly 23 miles; the bike paths there and back were not bumper to bumper; and our recreational vehicles took up less parking space once we got them home.
Alex gives the debate two thumbs down. Or he would, if he weren’t strapped into his chair.
Somewhere in the afterlife, Steve Jobs is thinking, “Damn, and I thought I had a reality-distortion field.”
Yes, we watched last night’s “debate,” and we won’t be watching any more of them, thanks all the same. Too much TV helped us get into this mess, and more of it will not help us get out.
This morning I took a quick glance around the Innertubes and if last night’s faceoff moved the electoral needle a silly millimeter one way or the other I was unable to find any evidence of it.
I’m starting to think that the only way to pry an acolyte or two away from Agent Orange is to catch him in bed on prime time snorting blow off an 18-year-old undocumented gay hooker on welfare who is both an ISIS mole and a fraudulently registered Democrat. Either that or he starts eating live puppies instead of taco bowls.
And I certainly don’t expect him to have a come-to-Jesus moment anytime soon, not even a pretend one, the way Alex did. One of us will take a long step off a very high place first, and it won’t be him.
Good thing I gave up the acid before moving to New Mexico.
Here’s a snap from around sundown, taken from the entryway to El Rancho Pendejo. Lots easier to look at than the news lately.
As James Fallows notes at The Atlantic, “the effective merger of the entertainment and political-campaign industries” continues apace with Der Trumpenführer making a playful appearance on “The Tonight Show.” Host Jimmy Fallon and executive producer Lorne Michaels — who also arranged a ha-ha handjob for Agent Orange on “Saturday Night Live” — deserve public dick-punches for enabling this particular fool.
Blue skies, white clouds and green chile. Yum.
Also at The Atlantic,David Graham wonders just why The Hildebeast is running for the presidency. A little late for this sort of thing, but yeah. And a great lede: “Hillary Clinton is back on her feet. Now, what does she stand for?”
Elsewhere, the media scrambled to cover “a major announcement” from Agent Orange that was nothing more than free publicity for his new DC hotel. No link because, duh.
“Like a five-buck violin, cable news. Like a five-buck violin,” tweeted Charles P. Pierce (@ESQPolitics).
Added Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias): “All future presidential campaigns will be lightly disguised infomercials for hotel chains.”
Meanwhile, here in the Duke City, the forecast is for puffy clouds followed by sunshine and a high in the 70s. We got that and green chile. Don’t tell the media.
The weatherman expects welcome moisture through the weekend before the inevitable warming and drying trend resumes.
The so-called monsoons have been washing away the memory of a too-hot July as August heads for the barn.
Mornings are nice and cool — just 61 at the moment — and the afternoon highs have been topping out in the upper 70s, with the rains rolling in around dinnertime. This is hard to beat, I don’t mind telling you.
Also hard to beat is Ronald McDonald McTrump, mostly because he has that pesky Secret Service detail frisking everyone for blackjacks, ax handles and baseball bats. Agent Orange just keeps bouncing around the country from rally to rally, not so much campaigning as entertaining, which makes me wonder whether he’s really after the presidency. Could he instead be pursuing some sort of honky media empire based on the WWF/WWE model of raising a fine crop of money in a carefully tended bed of fresh bullshit?
Think about it. As Stephen K. Miller noted over at National Review back in April, “Pro wrestling’s biggest stage was where Donald Trump the political populist was born.”
In pro wrestling you have good guys, bad guys and crooked referees. Nicknames abound (Little Marco, Macho Man, Lyin’ Ted, Jake the Snake). Everyone knows the game is rigged, but who cares? It’s showtime, baby!
God knows there’s not much to watch down at Konrad’s Kountry Klavern these days. They could use a little uplifting Christian entertainment. The teevee’s full to bustin’ with mud people, Jews, homos, trannies and smarties (they’re the worstest). Where are Joe Friday and Bill Gannon, Ozzie and Harriet, Ed Sullivan and Topo Gigio? (OK, so that was just a little gay.)
You’ll know I was right if at the first debate El Trumpo body-slams the Hilldebeast, Megyn Kelly smacks Gwen Ifill with a folding chair, and money rains down from the ceiling. Katie bar the door!
