“HQ says there’s a woke art exhibit at the Smithsonian. Cover me … I’m going in.”
“Tin soldiers and dipshits coming.”
Thus spake Charles P. Pierce about the governors of Ohio, South Carolina, and West Virginia sending National Guardspersons to “help police” the crime-ridden hellhole that is* Washington, D.C., which escalates the performative bullshit to DUMBCON 3.
Charlie further notes that Philip Bump, late of The Bezos Post, has assembled an interactive map “illustrating all the places in Ohio, West Virginia, and South Carolina that are actually more crime-ridden than Washington,” yet somehow muddle along with nothing heavier than the local coppers.
Parody throws its arthritic paws in the air and says, “Chieu hoi! I give.”
Man, they really do it in the road at their West Gomorrah location. Let’s just look at the extras on this fabulous car! Wire-wheel spoke fenders, two-way sneeze-through wind vent, star-studded mudguards, sponge-coated edible steering column, chrome fender dents, and factory air-conditioned air from our fully factory-equipped air-conditioned factory. It’s a beautiful car, friend, with doors to match! Birch’s Blacklist says this automobile was stolen, but for you, friends, the complete price, only two-ninety-five hundred dollars, in easy monthly payments of twenty-five dollars a week, twice a week, and never on Sundays. …
The hummingbird feeders are going back in the closet for now.
The quail are laying low. The hummingbirds have flown south. Yet one bird remains, flying more or less daily at the elaborate altars to fascism that The Duck! City MAGgots construct in their front yards.
I prefer the actual birds to the gnarly old featherless talon I flip to the yard signs, banners, and flags of the FreeDummies as I bicycle past their fauxdobe compounds in the foothills. Simultaneously a departure from and a riff on the traditional Halloween decor from China via Walmart, I suppose — but I like my goblins a little less, y’know, real. Y’know?
Now and then it seems I’ve pedaled into some hideous Mike Judge-Tim Burton reboot of “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.”
Linus, who considers himself an intellectual but gets his news and analysis from Facebook and NextDoor, pesters Pendleton about adding a Kevlar “Security Blanket” to its line. He wants one for his annual Halloween stint in the pumpkin patch, just in case another assassin decides to have a go at the Great Pumpkin, assuming he actually shows up.
Charlie Brown is an “independent” (unless you count Social Security and Medicare). It’s a convenient political fiction that means he hasn’t got the stones to put a “Pumpkin 2024” sign in his yard for fear of offending the Little Red-Haired Girl, who has long since married someone with a job and a future.
Not so Schroeder, the lone clone of an unrepentant Nazi who fled Germany as the Allies closed in; he plays “The Horst Wessel Song” on a toy piano while gazing soulfully at a framed, life-size, autographed photo of the Great Pumpkin cheating at squash.
Lucy is now a brittle bottle blonde who’s “had some work done” to keep her job as a screeching harridan for Fox News. These days she kicks balls rather than snatching them away from Charlie Brown.
Peppermint Patty (field-hockey coach) and Marcie (librarian) share a one-bedroom apartment with a dozen or so rescue cats and not nearly enough ventilation. But plenty of joy.
Pig-Pen is actually Steve Bannon (because of course he is). He had planned a live podcast from the big Halloween party until the FCI Danbury warden refused to honor his “Get Out of Jail Free” card from the Goldman Sachs’ edition of “Monopoly,” in which all properties are Park Place and only poor people go to jail.
And Snoopy is an undercover K-9 informing on all of them to the FBI.
Our backyard hummingbird shower.* *Hummingbird not included.
The GOP pestilential dogfight is shaping up into something like “The Lord of the Rings” as reimagined by Charles Bukowski with an assist from William Gibson.
Thus we get Scum Baggins, Douche Baggins, Colostomy Baggins, and so on.
In this Bukowski-Gibson cyberpunk edition the Shire is a casino built on a Superfund site, a former dogfighting venue called Slobbiton.
The Wizards are all off somewhere dicking around with AI, social media, and first-class-only rocket flights to nowhere special for the Elves (Dwarves can’t afford a ticket).
The Rings of Power are not limited to the Elite — they’re Watches of Power, and can be acquired by anyone with the do-rei-me — but all they do is let you answer the phone that’s perpetually in your hand anyway and tell you to get out of the La-Z-Boy for a couple minutes every hour, you great fat bastard. Mostly the Ring-wielders use that time to go to the fridge for some tasty Boar’s Head snacks.
Speaking of pigs’ heads, at some point our revised narrative careens off piste entirely into “Lord of the Flies” territory. The Wizards and Elves get voted off the island on charges of being woke, trans, or both; everyone left is some variation on Jack or Roger (though George Soros makes a brief cameo as Piggy); and the Royal Navy never turns up to set things aright because THIS IS AMERICA BUDDY! YEAH, BABY! USA! USA! USA!
All things considered we’d rather watch a sprinkler in the back yard. Now and then we get to see a hummingbird enjoy a brief shower.
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