Speaking of falls, we have a Noo Joisey senator being indicted (again) on federal corruption charges; MAGA cultists in the House of Reprehensibles making a meal (more of an amuse-bouche, really) of Squeaker Charlie McCarthy’s withered testicles; and at least one Supreme Court justice with all the ethical bona fides of a hyena on a gutpile.
I’d like to assign blame for all these shenanigans, but it’s a beautiful day and there are bicycles around here that need riding. So I’ll just observe that if we keep locking our mutts in the national pantry, we are liable to keep finding ourselves light on pork come suppertime.
The biggest downside I can see, other than the strong likelihood that none of this will ever come to pass, is that all the poison he sucked through his pursed little piehole during a lifetime of culinary sins would probably kill all our new plants, shrubs, and trees.
Good reads
• Tom Nichols at The Atlantic. You have to love a guy who writes so clearly and forcefully, while throwing in a bonus reference to “The Verdict,” one of my favorite Paul Newman flicks.
In fact, it is in its precision where lies this indictment’s real power. In no place, does Smith get out over his skis. It is monumental as a historical document, but, as a legal document, it is carefully crafted, almost delicately etched. For example, there is no talk of citing the former president* for treason or for insurrection. Smith clearly has crafted an indictment precisely drawn to conform to the whopping silo of evidence he has compiled and nothing else. And it is precisely drawn to sit the former president* down under a swinging lightbulb in a dark interrogation room.
George Washington established the precedent of voluntarily stepping down after two of those terms, a restraint later incorporated into the Constitution through the 22nd Amendment. John Adams established the precedent of peacefully surrendering power after losing an election. Ever since, every defeated president accepted the verdict of the voters and stepped down. As Ronald Reagan once put it, what “we accept as normal is nothing less than a miracle.”
Never fear. We’re still earthworms. It’s just that The Duck! City landscape looks a bit lunar in spots, especially at the eastern end of Comanche Road NE, which tilts up and turns to dirt just short of Foothills Trail 365.
During our nine years here a few eastbound motorists have failed to notice that Comanche just sort of, oh, I don’t know, ends at its intersection with Camino de la Sierra NE. Their vehicles take flight, briefly, then return to earth, their only laurels being the remains of the wire fence marking the end of Comanche and the beginning of the Sandia Mountains. Resale value and driving privileges suffer. Lunacy of a different sort entirely.
Yeah, but it’s a dry heat.
Anyway, it’s not hot enough around here to be the moon, which enjoys highs of 260° Fahrenheit in full sunlight. It just feels that way lately.
Herself and I got a late start on our weekly bike ride this morning, and it was getting right toasty as we climbed Big Horn Ridge Drive toward a couple of whoop-de-doos that are more fun when done from the other direction.
Bunnies we had seen, but no quail, and I was thinking we were going to get skunked (har de har har) until a lone adult quail ran across the road just ahead of us, saw us, and pulled a U, scurrying back down into the gully.
We stopped to have a peek over the side, and wowser, there were at least three pairs of adults and a whole mob of juveniles puttering around down there, wishing we would quit gawking and be on our way, like the two e-bikers who zip-zapped past without a word.
It pays to keep your eyes peeled around here. You never know what you might see, even if it’s only a windshield full of wire and the Sandias coming up fast.
“If you’re traveling this summer, you better hope that you don’t need help from an airline.” — Mac Schwerin, “Somehow, Airline Customer Service Is Getting Even Worse,” in The Atlantic.
And yet people wonder why I refuse to fly the unfriendly skies.
Last evening Herself and I — from the Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport and The Duck! City, respectively — were watching her scheduled departure time shift from 6:35 p.m. Minneapolis time to 8:13, then 10 … and finally right off the clock entirely. Mickey’s big hand gave us the finger. Canceled. Sorry ’bout that.
According to FlightAware, the Delta aircraft headed her way from Maine was delayed more than four hours before finally taking off just before 6 p.m. Duck! City time — whether it had been in Maine all that time is anybody’s guess, as is where it was actually headed once it left the Pine Tree State — and for a while there it was looking like she still had a chance of getting home by stupid-thirty Tuesday morning.
But nix. No wheels up for you, toots. Go stand in line with the other poor saps to learn nothing useful from a Delta agent. Word on the concourse was that all Delta flights for Tuesday were already full up, and there might not be a seat available until Thursday. Yikes, etc.
So I book her a room at the nearby Hilton Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport … after which she decides to rent a seat on a Southwest flight to The Duck! City via Phoenix leaving at 5:35 a.m.
This means being at the Minneapolis airport by 3:35 a.m. for check-in, so there’s no point in cabbing it to the Hilton for a $200 wash and brush-up and then heading right back to the airport for another beating.
So I go to cancel that room … only Hilton won’t let me do it online for some mysterious reason known only to the servo-bots running the Hilton website. So I have to call and speak to an actual human being. How 20th century of them.
Happily, the obsolete meat-things prove friendly, efficient and helpful — tip of the Mad Dog Rivendell cap to Alicia working the front desk in Minneapolis — and the room is canceled without penalty, leaving Herself at liberty to wander aimlessly through the Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport dragging Old Pinkie, her battle-scarred, doughty rolling suitcase, which Delta did not send to Tierra del Fuego, Ukraine, or the Event Horizon in orbit around Neptune.
Now, some might say that looking to Southwest for salvation is like hailing a passing shark to take you from the Titanic to that iceberg over there. And I am one of them.
But at least those pirates finally got her and Old Pinkie off the deck and into the air. If only to Sky Harbor. Happily, they have Hiltons in Phoenix too.
• Editor’s note: Yes, I read about the weather nightmares, traffic-control problems, and the overheating cable at Ronnie Raygun Intergalactic Airport. Thousands of flights delayed or canceled. And like Mac Schwerin I appreciate the complexities of arranging air travel. (“Delta flies something like the population of Sacramento every day, on average.”) But still, you’d think Someone in Authority might empower the boots on the ground at the Delta counter to grab a hot mic and shout, “You’re all fucked!” rather than making their customers queue up to get the same message one at a time.
Ho hum. I see some deep-pockets blowhard strolled in and out of court again yesterday, without consequences, as per usual. Not even a mug shot.
Shit, I’ve done more time than this blabbering plastic sack of fast-food farts, a serial liar who cheats at golf and would sell his idiot children to the Saudis, if he could find one dumb and mean enough to buy them for sex toys and/or dog food.
And I didn’t have to lip off to the cops, DAs, or judges to get jugged, either.
No, that would’ve been one of my bros, the dude who told the graying Colfax beat cop with the rookie partner: “You can’t arrest us for walking out of a bar with a beer.”
Ho, ho. Wrong again.
This regrettable incident took place in the Glory Days, when my friends and I were basically ambulatory recruiting posters for the War On Drugs. We’d have let the feds put our faces on a “Know Your Enemy” flyer if they paid us in cocaine and Stoli.
None of us was wealthy. We had no well-connected allies. We had dedicated ourselves to scaling new heights of impairment and then tumbling down the other side into a crusty rental house that used to be part of a Glendale nursery. For plants. Not children.
And thus we learned how to talk to cops. Be polite. Rely upon the short, simple words you can still pronounce without drooling. Don’t let the nice flatfoot see the devils raging behind your blood-red eyeballs.
And never, under any circumstances, tell a cop, “You can’t arrest us for [insert your offense here].”
My friend forgot this cardinal rule — only for a moment — but that’s all it takes. Loose lips sink ships, especially when the crew is hammered. And so we all got a fun ride in the drunk wagon and a night to remember in the Denver calaboose, where we met some fascinating people.
One was a duster (crazed on PCP), and he was quickly awarded the entire drunk tank for his earsplitting arguments with people or Things who were not there. We more numerous but much less scary drunks got packed into two-man cells so we could enjoy the floor show from a safe distance.
Another was a glum-looking permed and pastel-leisure-suited gent who had gotten popped for soliciting a hooker who turned out to be a vice cop. He could see his apartment from our cell, but not his wife inside it. He was not looking forward to seeing her in his new digs.
We got sprung in the morning without charges. Go and sin no more, you silly little shits, they told us. But goddamn it, we did our time.
If only we’d been riot-inciting former presidents of the United States whose Florida resort’s crappers were overflowing with national secrets instead of addled stoners getting sideways with a Colfax cop.
We’d have been back in the Satire Lounge before closing time.
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