Nothing to see here, folks; move along, move along. I’m just fiddling with the controls to get a handle on how many changes to the posting process WordPress slipped past me whilst I was otherwise occupied.
More as I learn it.
Meanwhile, for any of you who have had comments drift off into the ether, fear not. I’ll begin checking the spam folder a couple-three times a day.
¡Basta ya! I embarked on a news diet yesterday. As in “fasting.”
Throughout the long Fourth I consumed exactly zero news, save for checking the weather to see if it was suitable for the healthy outdoor exercise.
And really, I could’ve just stepped outside for that.
But still. Shit.
The media had been keening without letup at a pitch that made an Irish wake look like sitting zazen. The Internet is said to be bottomless, the way a cup of joe used to be, but they came perilously close to filling the fucker up.
The fans in my 10-year-old MacBook Pro were approaching a Boeing level of failure. Every hot take a platter of steaming horseshit, smack in the gob. In my Father’s Bistro there are Many Dishes, I mused blasphemously. I sure as hell don’t have to eat this shit.
So I pulled a Level One Roberto Duran: “No más, no más.”
As mentioned in the previous post, yesterday I took my coffee on the couch, not at the desk. After breakfast Herself and I went for a short trail run. I followed that up with a 90-minute ride.
Then I set a loaf of bread to baking, poured the fixings for Sarah DiGregorio’s chipotle-honey chicken tacos into the Crock-Pot, argued with the Voices in my head about which of our many subscriptions we should cancel, entertained Miss Mia Sopaipilla, and served up the grub.
The three of us dined in front of the TV, streaming a couple episodes of “The Bear,” season three. (Spoiler alert: There was less hollering, even when Sugar was in labor.)
Afterward we joined the neighbors for their annual fireworks extravaganza in the cul-de-sac. No flyers or boomers, just ground-level sparklers and sizzlers. But an enjoyable tradition nonetheless.
One of the grandkids was leaping and cavorting throughout, trying to grab a handful of smoke, as grandpa performed his pyrotechnical wizardry. I caught my share of the exhaust while sitting down, in my clothing, eyes, and windpipe, and both Herself and I had to hit the showers afterward to hose off the residue of whatever those wily foreign devils put in their whizbangs.
The Republic I left to its own devices. I expect there was no shortage of counsel, and plenty of fireworks, too.
• Meanwhile, a housekeeping note: If any of you have tried and failed to post a comment recently, and you are using an Apple device, the problem may reside with the Safari browser. Herself was able to comment from an M1 Mac Mini using Firefox. I’ve pinged the WordPress people and will get back to you with whatever they have to say. But in the meantime, you might try using another browser to make your voices heard.
Go to all that trouble to get rid of a king and what happens? A couple hundred years later six unelected bench-warmers give him back to you.
DeeCee being a rather long slog via Subaru, I decided I’d settle for a short mood-altering run on the neighborhood trails yesterday.
I won’t travel by air, as you know. And if I did, the airline probably wouldn’t let me take my torch and pitchfork, even as checked baggage.
Anyway, what do I know about taxidermy? Sure, I could collect a few souvenir heads in our nation’s capital with my handy-dandy Gomboy folding saw, but then what? The TSA says you can board a plane with fresh meat, but they may decide to add a cautionary note about “the severed heads of Supreme Court justices” after running your lumpy carry-on through the scanner twice because they didn’t believe what they saw on the first pass.
And if you do manage to make it home without incident, preserving and mounting your prizes for display in the den is not a chore you want to hand off to anyone who doesn’t owe you a really big favor.
Shucks, even a six-pack of ears pinned to a cork board in the garage can make for some pointed conversations you’d rather not have, even if you explain that the fuckers never used them for listening, only to keep their trifocals from falling into their black robes or onto the bench, and anyway, with the fat stacks of attaboys they get from their rich pals they can have a new pair grafted on before you can say, “Case dismissed.”
So, yeah. Herself and I went for a nice trail run in the sunshine, and afterward I decided I was still not in the mood to update myself on the latest news, so I changed costumes and took the Voodoo Wazoo for an enjoyable 90 minutes of light gnar-shredding in the Elena Gallegos Open Space.
Today I see the courtroom drama has shifted back to Manhattan. Time for another run. I can’t remember where I put that saw.
Call me cynical (“You’re cynical!”), but I don’t think that other cat, the bedraggled, raggedy-ass orange tom that keeps slinking around the joint, yowling, spraying on the national furniture, and clawing the Stars & Stripes curtains into ribbons, is in danger of being put to sleep anytime soon.
Nossiree, he’s got himself a solid majority of black-robed laps in which to curl up while he awaits delivery of The Big Fish, the one that got away on Jan. 6, 2021.
Fuck me running.
Meanwhile, the playacting continues. Government shutdown: Will they or won’t they? Dueling VIP visits to The Border, that deadly, open-air, razor-wired waiting room where all the brown foreigners go to apply for the jobs nobody else wants. The Senate leadership following the House down the rabbit hole to Wonderland. Gaza. Ukraine. “Dynamic pricing” at Wendy’s.
And now, this: Is a president a king?
I thought we settled that question back in 1776. But as I recall, that king required a few years of rather aggressive convincing before he conceded the point.
Mad Blog Media 