They say that money Can’t buy love in this world But it’ll get you a half-pound of cocaine And a 16-year old girl And a great big long limousine On a hot September night Now that may not be love But it is all right. — Randy Newman, ‘It’s Money That I Love’
Don’t touch that dial! No, seriously, don’t touch it. Eeeyeeww.
I see Prince Maybelline, putative Heir to the Golden Escalator, has managed a rare double in the 2026 Foreign Policy World Series, failing to end a war and queer an election.
Sucks to be him. If there’s ever a Marvel movie about this administration, and there shouldn’t be, I figure Johnny Depp plays the prince in full Jack Sparrow makeup. Stellan Skarsgård will of course bring his Baron Vladimir Harkonnen chops to the role of Addled Shitler, but with an overlay of Evil Otis Campbell from the Bizarro World version of “The Andy Griffith Show.”
And now Shitler is beefing with the pope? He’s a huge fat bastard for sure, but I don’t think he can make the weight for that bout, no matter how many Unhappy Meals he inhales between fat rails of Adderall.
The start of Tramway’s descent toward Interstate 25.
Never fear, I’m not back on the sauce. This drop taken was down to the bosque, for the first time this year.
It was a lovely day, if a bit windy — high of 80°, 65° when I started — and if I’d had my wits about me I could’ve finally ridden my age (in kilometers).
The Rio lacks a certain grandeur.
But I didn’t. After inspecting the state of the Rio Grande below the Gail Ryba bridge (still fluid, in a not-so-solid fashion), instead of pulling a U and heading home via the Paseo/North Diversion/Osuna-Bear Canyon trails, I noodled back to the ranch through Old Town to Odelia-Indian School and the Paseo de las Montañas/Tramway trails. Wound up 8 miles short of a birthday ride. In kilometers. Which is kind of like kissing your sister.
The Bosque Bandido never materialized, but I did notice a John Law parked on the gravel at trailside. We exchanged waves. Didn’t ask to see my papers or nothin’. Which was fortunate, because all I had on me was an elderly iPhone 13 mini, a water bottle, and a stick of Clif Blox. It would’ve been off to County Clare for Your Humble Narrator.
“Ireland? But your honor, my client’s bicycle doesn’t even have fenders!”
“Tough titty, counselor — he should’ve thought about that before his great-granddaddy came here to occupy a barstool that by rights belonged to a nat’chal-borned American. Next case!”
The good news is I missed whatever it was Melania thought she was up to behind the pestilential lectern, where nobody could see the rug burns on her elbows and knees, and that “Property of Satan’s Slaves’ tat’ on her ass.
Isn’t it about time we started relocating some of these Trumps to gilt-free cages in the swamps, deserts, and desert swamps of Wottalottaland, Lower Slobbovia, and Spaminacanistan? I mean, Christ, Boss Hogg is bombing anything he can’t steal, Melanoma’s doing this feeble impression of Richard Pryor’s “Now are you gonna believe me or your lyin’ eyes?” bit, and now Barron wants to start dealing speed in Florida?
Dude thinks he’s being cute by calling it “yerba mate,” which I think is Guarani for “murder tea.” Wait until he hears what the Cartel calls it. “Gringo failing to swim across the Gulf of America while wearing 300 pounds of chains, a jukebox, and a burlap sack,” is what.
See if you can get mommy and daddy to join you for that dip in the shark tank, kid. Your ould fellah could certainly use the exercise. Driving the golf cart and having people killed ain’t getting it done.
• Addendum: Artemis II made it home safely, and about 20 minutes after they were bobbing around in the Pacific off San Diego, boom! We got our first hummingbird of the new year at our feeders. Winning!
I have some thoughts about a long-overdue firing. The underperforming employee is pictured above. Let’s fire him — to the moon. Tell him it’s made of Mickey D’s cheeseburgers and he can be king of the place until the oxygen and/or ketchup runs out.
The Marquis of Mar-a-Lago is definitely not a king, by the standards of “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.” Shit all over him. Plenty of it his own.
James Fallows has a few thoughts about how the Marquis chose to note the passing of former FBI director Robert Mueller, who died Friday at 81. Quoth His Excremency:
Good, I’m glad that he is dead.
Ouf! Dude sure knows how to set the tone, que no?
Well, I’m glad we got that out of the way, not least because I have a penchant for short and not-so-sweet obits myself, some of them with a callback to the old National Lampoon headline — “Franco Dies, Goes to Hell” — and I’m very much looking forward to writing his.
Fallows gives a shout-out to the upcoming No Kings rallies and suggests that we call/write the Orange House, plus our senators and representatives, to deliver “messages of outrage.” Great idea, and I’m all for it.
But that old Yippie-wannabe streak of mine, as always, yearns to take the response just a wee bit further. …
What about sending His Excremency a roll of industrial-grade toilet paper, the kind of 220-grit sandpaper you find in roadside rest areas, hot-sheet motels, and jails, with a note suggesting that he use it to wipe his all-too-public asshole, the one just below his nose?
Or perhaps a single long pubic hair taped to a postcard, with instructions to use it as dental floss after shitting through his face like this? Which he wouldn’t, of course. You know His Excremency never flosses; just tosses his dentures to a minion, who dunks them in the thundermug and then shoehorns them back in through that wrinkled, puckered orifice.
No, not that one. We’re talking the attic here, not the basement.
In the meantime, we can attend our local No Kings events and wait for that glorious, long-overdue day when we can all breathe a sigh of relief and say:
Good, I’m glad that he is dead.
Call me an optimist, but I like to think that this non-king will rest under a blanket of shit for eternity. His should be the only tombstone in the boneyard with a toilet-paper dispenser.