Archive for the ‘Dollars and nonsense’ Category

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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.”

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Posted in Casual snark, Dollars and nonsense, Feddle gummint | 23 Comments »

Soil bank

March 16, 2023

What the heck, it’s just some wet bricks in the deck.

Probably not a great day to bury the bullion in the backyard.

We got about a quarter inch of rain overnight, and the weather wizards say more is on the way, through Monday at the very least.

Anyway, you want to bury your treasure in the dead of night so the neighbors can’t get a fix on its location. You come home from the grocery and find a big empty hole in the ground where your portfolio used to be and it will flat spoil the rest of your day.

Still, it might be safer under the sod than in a bank. I’m the last person on Earth you’d call a financial genius, but when all the wiseguys seem to have their heads up their holes maybe your wealth should go down one, where they can’t get their greedy little fingers on it without some manicure-wrecking shovel work.

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Posted in Dollars and nonsense, Incisive financial analysis, Rain | 9 Comments »

A Charles Pelkey live update

January 16, 2023

The GoFundMe that David Stanley set up to help our old pal Charles “Live Update Guy” Pelkey is ticking along nicely, which is more than I can say for the “classic” LUG video up above.

As of 2 p.m. Dog time the fund was at $24,410 — a tip jar that we never could’ve imagined when we were begging for nickels to run Live Update Guy. A thousand thank-yous to everyone who has contributed and/or spread the word about the fundraiser.

Now, give a listen to another old pal, Diane “The Outspoken Cyclist” Jenks, who interviewed David for the most recent episode of her long-running podcast.* You’ll get a better idea of how all this good fellowship came about.

If you haven’t joined the party, here’s a link to CP’s GoFundMe page.

* One minor correction: The cartoon of Charles that accompanies the GoFundMe news Diane and I spread around is not by Your Humble Narrator. It’s by David Brinton, a.k.a. Brintoni, who did such great work illustrating “At the Back” in VeloNews while I was up front pissing on people’s shoes.®

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Posted in Colleagues, Comrades, Dollars and nonsense, Health care, Illness, Journalism, Live Update Guy | 6 Comments »

One step beyond

August 31, 2022

Your money’s no good here, and neither is anything else.

Mikhail Gorbachev has died and gone to Commie Hell, which looks a lot like Walmart.

Capitalist Hell, of course, looks more like Bed Bath & Beyond.

If I cared to visit a BB&B, which I do not, I could wander right on in with my face hanging out as in days of yore, and not just because there would be no other customers (and possibly no employees).

No, it seems that overnight Bernalillo County has switched from Condition Red on the Bug-O-Meter to Go-Anywhere Green, for reasons which elude me.

Oh, wait, just thought of one: The Labor Day Drive Far and Spend Heavily While the Gas is Still Cheap(ish) Holiday Extravaganza. Get out there and buy something, you sissies!

I suppose it beats hanging out in the castle with Prospero, waiting for the Red Death to come knocking despite the “No Solicitors” sign on the door.

And if worse came to worst one could always bunker up in a Bed Bath & Beyond, which has to be the closest thing to a sterile environment outside the Wildfire lab near Flatrock, Nevada.

But still, it all seems a bit one step beyond. Madness!

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Posted in All property is theft, Bidness, Capitalist swine, Deep political thought, Dollars and nonsense, Holidays, Incisive financial analysis, Music that doesn't suck, Plague, Road trips, Socialism, Viewing with alarm | 32 Comments »

Outside+ looking in

May 20, 2022

Ask not for whom the bike bell tolls.

Ring-a-ding-ding, bitches.

It was never a question of if, but of when. The Greater Outside+ Globe-Spanning Vertically Integrated Silo O’ Sports & Fitness, LLC, has begun excreting magazines and scribes, because that’s what vulture capitalists do: Gobble and shit, gobble and shit.

I knew my time was up last year when I saw the thousand-pound sack of boilerplate contract Outside’s drones expected me to sign if I cared to keep drawing funnies for Bicycle Retailer and Industry News.

After a quick semantic analysis boiled their bullshit down to its smoky essence — “All hope abandon, ye who enter here!” — I trimmed it to a few salient grafs that cut straight to the chase, sent them off, and never heard another peep.

Not long afterward, I retired.

Now, the folks who stuck around and did the work are getting the old heave and also the ho. Talented types like Ben Delaney and Nicole Formosa, to name just two. It’s basically v2.0 of Competitor Group Inc., which gave Charles Pelkey and John Wilcockson the bum’s rush Back in the Day®. Same old guillotine, just different heads and an Outside Gear Box instead of the usual basket.

I can’t speak to the quality of the publications that lost staffers or are going dark entirely. I don’t read them. My subscription dollars are spent elsewhere.

But if these pubs aren’t profitable, I’m guessing it’s probably not Ben’s fault, or Nicole’s. Might have something to do with an overabundance of supernumeraries who don’t write, edit, shoot, sketch, or sell.

If I were showing people the door in an effort to save money I might start with anyone who uses the bloodless words “product” and “content” to describe “stories” and “photographs.” There’s always work for people who think everything is a commodity, including their souls.

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Posted in Bad news, Capitalist swine, Dollars and nonsense, Journalism | 14 Comments »

All aTwitter

April 26, 2022

My final tweet, from New Year’s Eve 2017. Didn’t cost me shit.

OK, pop quiz. if you had $44 billion lying around doing not very much you would:

  1. Feed the hungry.
  2. House the homeless.
  3. Buy Twitter.

I guess I get it, kinda, sorta. I mean, I like toys. I just bought a canister stove for my occasional camping adventures; MSR said they didn’t have the bits to modernize my Bronze Age RapidFire, then offered me 30 percent off on a new burner. So, ’ray for MSR and for me.

But Twitter? Maybe Elon has the bits to fix that hot mess, and maybe he doesn’t. He can certainly throw bales of cash at it until he tears a rotator cuff or finds some other shiny object to money-whip until boredom sets in once again.

Me, I don’t even want to use Twitter for free.

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Posted in Capitalist swine, Dollars and nonsense, Gadget lust, Technology, Things that suck | 18 Comments »

‘Anyone can get an auto loan’

March 16, 2022

For when the M1126 Infantry Carrier Vehicle just isn’t big enough.

OK, so, with the Russian war in Ukraine, random gun violence here at home, and inflation everywhere, we all have plenty to worry about.

But wait! There’s more!

Cyclists, pedestrians, and anyone else hoping for safe streets in a livable environment will hop the first dick-missile to Mars after scanning this New York Times story on what the quarter-point hike in the Fed’s key interest rate means for any of us chickens who’d like to cross the road without winding up fried and breaded in one of the Colonel’s buckets.

A couple key pull-quotes:

“There is far more variation in auto lending than in, say, the mortgage market because there are more credit types. Anyone can get an auto loan.” — Jonathan Smoke, chief economist at Cox Automotive, an industry consulting firm.

“Car-loan rates will move up as the Fed hikes interest rates, but it will be a nonissue for car buyers because it has such a limited impact on monthly payments. Nobody will need to downsize from the S.U.V. to the compact because of rising rates.” — Greg McBride, chief financial analyst at Bankrate.com.

Damn straight. Fuck a bunch of Prius. Whadda I look like, some hippie? I got an image to maintain. What are the Russian oligarchs driving this season?

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Posted in Assholes, Automobiles, Bad news, Despair, Dollars and nonsense, Incisive financial analysis | 16 Comments »

Beans and rice, rice and beans, beans and rice

February 10, 2022

Back to basics.

Inflation rises, earnings fall.

Happily, literature has the answer.

There’s “On the Road,” by Jack Kerouac:

“You know what President Truman said,” Remi [Boncœur] would say. “We must cut down on the cost of living.”

And also, “Tortilla Flat,” by John Steinbeck:

Beans are a roof over your stomach. Beans are a warm cloak against economic cold.

Thus, yesterday I labored mightily and brought forth the plato combinado. Green chile chicken enchiladas, frijoles, and rice. Not pictured: The appetizer created by Herself; sliced avocado with halved cherry tomatoes, olive oil, salt, and pepper. We will be gnawing on this carcass for days.

The mantra around here when money gets tight is “Beans and rice, rice and beans, beans and rice.” So there you have it. Go forth and do likewise.

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Posted in Cooking, Dollars and nonsense | 20 Comments »

All is well

November 24, 2021

It’s nearly kickoff time for the 2021 Cavalcade of Consumerism, so grab yourself a sammich and a frosty beverage and settle into the La-Z-Boy for the Big Game.

The NPD Group advises us that 30 percent of respondents to a recent survey yearn for the door-busting, clerk-trampling, no-holds-barred combat of Black Friday, in which sleep-deprived, half-frozen fatties who spent Thanksgiving night camped outside a Lubbock Best Buy do it hand to hand over dubious bargains on giant TVs that will watch them like famished zopilotes and suggest other must-have items based upon their observed activity, if any.

“Damn, another ad for Weight Watchers. And Planet Fitness. Who has the time? Pass the Fritos and bean dip.”

NPD doesn’t explain their survey methodology, but you know they didn’t ask for my thoughts, because 100 percent of me would rather stuff an angry ferret down his bibs than head for the trough on Black Friday to see what the Waltons are serving to the sneezers and wheezers (there’s still a plague going on, you may recall). Let ’em make their bacon out of the NPD’s dummies.

We plan a muted Thanksgiving here at El Rancho Pendejo. Herself will collect her mom from The Facility and we will do a late lunch —  cider-braised turkey thighs with taters and apples, stir-fried succotash with edamame, some class of a green salad, and Herself’s famous lemon bars. The ladies will enjoy a dram or two of wine, while I make do with a bottle of fake beer.

I bought the fixins on Monday to avoid the rush. There were just two cashiers at Sprouts and the queued natives were restless. If we get through the weekend without gunplay it will be a holiday miracle.

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Posted in Capitalist swine, Celebrations, Dollars and nonsense, Feckin' eejits, Gadget lust, Holidays | 24 Comments »

A workin’ man can’t get nowhere today

September 6, 2021

Luck of the draw.

Happy Labor Day, comrades.

I’m barely a worker these days; my paying chores have dwindled to one “Shop Talk” cartoon per month for Bicycle Retailer and Industry News.

Of course, now that BRAIN is a part of the Greater Outside Globe-Spanning Vertically Integrated Paywalled Conglomerate, I find myself negotiating a contract to keep my faded Levi’s up and buckled while I continue to do what I’ve been doing for nigh on to 30 years. So it goes.

Thus, in solidarity with all y’all still on The Man’s clock, here a few random tales culled from our workaday world:

• Hotel workers serve as an unsung pit crew for the firefighters battling the Caldor blaze.

• Job openings outnumber the unemployed. But a gulf between the jobs available and what workers want has led to a “Great Reassessment.”

• Speaking of assessments, are the bots trying to upend the MeatWorld JobMart or are we just stumbling around in the dark as per usual? Kevin Drum has some brief thoughts on the topic.

• Is the boss watching, even when you’re working from home? Maybe. Say hello to “tattleware.”

• Can a workin’ man get somewhere today? He surely couldn’t back in 1978, according to Merle Haggard.

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Posted in Agitprop, Bicycle Retailer and Industry News, Bidness, Capitalist swine, Cartooning, Deep political thought, Dollars and nonsense, Employers, Smashing the State, Socialism | 8 Comments »

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