The haze around here lately is courtesy of our neighbors to the north, who continue to be on fire.
Down south, Georgia finds itself contending with an unnatural disaster, as a conga line of douchebags waltzes in and out of the Fulton County sneezer after cutting bond-and-release deals of various weights.
Miss Mia Sopaipilla supervises the landscapers.
Here at El Rancho Pendejo we have our ongoing landscaping project, which involves neither conflagration nor sedition.
As it enters an extended ditch-digging/pipe-laying phase I thank the gods that I stumbled into journalism, much of which can be done sitting down, in the shade.
Still, I’d gladly stand for hours in the Georgia sun if I got to see the Tangerine Turd get printed and mugged, especially if he came off looking half as frazzled as Rudy the Mooch. Dude looks like a drunk goat trying to shit a rusty tomato can.
I knew my internal scribe was out walking a picket line with the Writers Guild of America when I considered titling a blog post “Maui wowie.”
Clever? Maybe. Funny? Most definitely not.
It’s been a bit of a rough patch for an old newsie who doesn’t give a fiddler’s fart about Barbie, the Iowa State Fair, Taylor Swift, a fish-slapping dance involving Zuck and Schmuck, Hunter Biden, or the latest freakout over artificial intelligence. (Texting Jesus?Seriously? Dude’s only been Holy Ghosting you people for a couple thousand years.)
We’re just 13 days into August and already I’m being served Halloween-related ads as I shamble around the Internets in search of inspiration.
But I’m having trouble envisioning anything more horrific than getting chased into the ocean by the deadliest American wildfire in more than a century and hearing later that some blogger made a lame joke about it.
Just a sec; gotta block this Jesus dude. He wants to know why the poor sods in Lahaina didn’t just walk to the mainland instead of jumping into the sea.
“That’s what I’da done,” he texts.
“Not with those holes in your feet,” I reply. “You’re not seaworthy anymore, skipper. More leaks than Ginger Hitler’s White House.”
Hot plate, señor. No, not the one on the table; the one in your head.
Hotter, drier, and windier — that’s the prediction as regards monsoon season from the National Weather Service Forecast Office here in The Duck! City.
A heat advisory is in our immediate future, as in tomorrow, the actual Fourth of July, which this year seemed to start sometime around last Thursday and will end … well, who knows? Not me, Skeezix.
There are a few fires going, prescribed and otherwise, the largest being the Pass Fire in the Gila National Forest. Nothing like what’s been going on in Canada; not yet, anyway.
Yesterday I rolled out for a little 30-miler with 1,200 feet of vertical gain — the lion’s share of it coming in the final grind from I-25 to The County Line barbecue joint — and it got a little toasty there toward the end. The brain was not quite at a rolling boil but even a brisk simmer gets your attention a couple hours into what should be a two-bottle ride.
Today it seemed wise to skip the Monday spin with the ould fellahs and instead go for a half-hour trail jog with Herself. Early. Before Tōnatiuh fired up His comal.
Tonight brings the cul-de-sac’s Fourth fiesta, featuring non-explosive, ground-based “fireworks” of the type that would have caused my younger self to use descriptive language that would get the 69-year-old me canceled in a heartbeat if anyone paid any attention at all to what I thought, said, or wrote. Which mostly they don’t, lucky for me.
Neighbors to the east have two kids, neighbors to the west have three grandkids, and the couple on the northeast corner have a toddler, so there will be sprouts of various sizes gamboling around and about, shrieking at the pips, pops, and poots as the Buck supermoon rises.
If we’re lucky the skeeters will take the night off. It’s too bloody hot to don the Levi’s body armor, and I don’t have a sword small enough to behead the little bastards.
Smoke gets in your eyes. And your nose. And your hair, your clothes, and. … | File photo by Crusty County correspondent Hal Walter
Huh. The Elitist East Coast Big City Liberal Smartypants Media has finally discovered what us hardy Westerners have knowed for years — huffing a giant forest fire’s secondhand smoke sucks.
We’ve experienced a few lulus over the years in Bibleburg, Weirdcliffe, and The Duck! City. And yeah, they got a little ink despite being largely confined to Flyover Country.
But holy hell. When the Big Apple looks like the Devil’s been feeding his firebox a passel of green wood with a weak draft you gon’ git yoreself some wall-to-wall coverage, son! That’s Scripture!
And even a dyed-in-the-Carhartt mountain man and desert rat like Your Humble Narrator has to admit that a few hundred Canadian wildfires blowing smoke from Maine to Spokane might just be worth a few “Live” headers over to The New York Times.
My old hometown of Ottawa has been taking a hit (and not the kind made famous by Cheech and Chong).
And I expect our Great White North correspondent Ol’ Herb might have a few thoughts on the matter, if he can stop coughing long enough to file a report expanding on the Detroit News coverage. Anyone else out there wearing their N95s again?
This started out smelling like rain, but what did we get? Nothing but heartache.
They promise rain, but all we get is fire.
The North American Monsoon is a couple of days late. And I expect a few long-haul truckers may be running behind schedule too, with a 30-acre brush fire closing eight miles of Interstate 40 westbound, from Zuzax to Carnuel, and the eastbound lane of NM 333 from Tramway to Tijeras.
The thing lit up 5-ish yesterday evening with a real stiff wind from the east, and here at El Rancho Pendejo we could see aircraft trying to piss it out, so as the crow and/or smoking ember flies it was a good deal closer to home than we like. Many local roadies, among them Your Humble Narrator, get their kicks on NM 333, a.k.a. Old Route 66.
We had gotten a whole bunch of not much in the way of journalism about the fire by bedtime last night — a paywall from the Journal and a couple drive-bys from the TV people — so, after checking New Mexico Fire Info a few times we decided to roll the dice and hit the rack.
Today we awakened to another warm, dry morning and very little in the way of news about our neighborhood scorcher. There’s some confusion about whether I-40 is open again, but it seems certain that 333 is a no-go this morning as a bridge and power lines get a look-see.
The good news is that the monsoon is back on the menu today. It goes without saying that we will believe this when we see the blessed water falling from the skies. Who knows? The local journos might even give it a writeup.
Mad Blog Media 