You probably can’t see the scattering of raindrops on my sunglasses, proof that I chose wisely when I decided to go for a run at 7:30 this morning instead of waiting to see whether the skies cleared.
The forecasts from the National Weather Service and Weather Underground were for … well, frankly, they were for shit. No common ground. One declared that it was already raining (it was not) and might be doing so again later. The other? “A chance of showers, with thunderstorms also possible after noon.”
Well, there’s always a chance of something happening somewhere. It’s what makes life worth living. There’s a chance that Jeebus might come back, give Orange Julius Caesar a sandal right in the ballroom, and deliver a new gospel over his squealing carcass: “This is not what I had in mind at all, y’all.”
But I’m not betting the rancho on it.
I did catch a few sprinkles on my run, mostly on the return trip. But they added up to bupkis on the rain gauge.
So naturally I’m sitting here wondering whether I should’ve gone for a ride instead.
But, chance being the fickle bitch that she is, Jeebus is probably waiting out there to give me the other sandal in the chamois and proclaim, “Nope, not him either. Sheesh, you people and your false prophets. Do I have to hire a babysitter every time I step out for a couple thousand years?”
Stalking around El Rancho Pendejo, muttering to myself as I ticked off the morning chores one by one, I got to thinking how nice it would be if somebody came around regularly to haul off all the garbage stinking up my skull.
Wouldn’t that be convenient? Just flip my lid, yank out the sack full of bad news, worse ideas, outdated references, and pointless distractions, heave it into a black plastic cart, and roll it down the driveway where someone else has to deal with it.
Hm. Wait a sec. We’ve already got something like that. They call it “blogging.”
Brooding is one of those many useful parts of life that you cannot admit to anymore. People will jump all over you, try to get you committed, drop you off at a yoga retreat. —Ken Layne, “Encounters with Coyote-Man,” on Desert Oracle Radio
I wasn’t brooding, exactly. But I had seen something like the 89,261,254th story on how E. Lawn Mulch has beshat Twatter. Or maybe it was the 63,294,204th “hot take” on how Orange Hitler skirted Buttface’s Maginot line.
Whatever the cause, the effect was my consultation via Apple Messages with colleagues Steve Frothingham and Hal Walter about undertaking a little urban renewal on the virtual town square.
Start sinking today!
“How about ‘TarPit™?'” I pitched to Steve. “‘Stumble into TarPit™ and start sinking today!'”
Instead of a page, users would get a Morass. Instead of tweets or posts, Bubbles:
“Dumbo’s going down for the third time!”
“Hey, I gotta reBubble that … whoops, too late, he’s a goner.”
“I think you are on to something,” replied Steve, who has a magazine and a website to put out and probably included that “to” out of professional courtesy.
As Steve seemed busy for some reason, I took the proposal to Hal, fronting him a couple of Bubbles I thought might be representative of the TarPit™ community.
“Help, help, I’m sinking!”
“Good! ’Bout time, you libtard cuck! Die! Die! Die!”
Hal found the concept interesting but, as is his practice, gave it a redneck spin.
“I’ma launch one called ‘Skillet,’ he announced. “Posts will be referred to as ‘Farts,’ as in, ‘I just Farted about ——.’ And they will be Farts in a Skillet.”
Well sir, I don’t mind telling you we got right on down to some cowboy cooking.
“Instead of ‘Friending,’ people will ‘Sniff’ each other,” Hal declared. “As in, ‘She sent me a Sniff request so I Sniffed her.'”
“ReFarting will be called ‘Lighting,” I added. “‘Hey, I just Lit your Fart!'”
Some unresolved discussion followed about whether direct messages (DMs) should be rebranded “Silent But Deadly” (SBDs) or “Pull My Finger” (PMFs).
As regards a logo, I was thinking — since we’re talking social media here and probably poaching more than a few red hats from Twatter — that we needed something monstrously racist, like a cartoon of a grinning pinto bean sporting a garish sombrero, a huge mustache, and a prominent gold tooth. Good draw for the NextDoor-OffMyLawn shutins, too.
Nope, said Hal. “The logo is just a frying pan: ‘SKILLET.'”
“That would be simpler,” I agreed. “Avoid the DOJ. Also, the Brown Berets.”
“Fucking A,” said Hal. “They don’t play.”
In the end nothing came of all this spitballing, which is probably just as well. It starts with a noble quest — help people heap abuse upon each other without getting punched (and while making bank for yourself) — and next thing you know you’re going off-piste into virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and space travel to places that make Ash Fork, Arizona, look like Maui.
Pretty soon you’re wearing a goggled helmet for real because you can’t breathe what Nuevo Arizona (the planet formerly known as Mars) has for an atmosphere. Orange Hitler’s Meata avatar runs your HOA. And E. Lawn Mulch is doing donuts outside your pod in his AWD Testo with an AI Sex-O-Bot 9000™ working his lap like a Sherwin-Williams paint shaker.
“There goes the neighborhood,” you grumble on NextPod-OffMySand. And then Mark Schmuckerberg Farts at you, and Jeff Bozos Lights it, and your pod explodes before you can create a GoFundMe to underwrite your return trip to Earth.
Jesus H. Don Juan and St. Castaneda preserve us! Is nothing sacred? Is there anything global capitalism will not besmirch with its grabby little hands?
Coming soon to a strip mall near you: a chain trippery called Mescalito’s. Try the gluten-free non-GMO vegan Peyote Burger with a side of Zoom ’Shrooms and a Cabron Lite® CBD lager!
Sorry, we haven’t had a drive-through window since a VW van full of hippies got caught in an M.C. Escher-King Crimson feedback loop at our Taos location and wound up circling the joint like hairy zopilotes until they ran out of gas.
So much for being a Trippist monk, growing your own revelations.
Oh, well. I guess even Mother Church has to buy the wafers and wine from someone.
In other news that makes you wonder who’s taking what:
• What’s this shit? The state of California has slammed the lid on San Francisco’s plans for a $1.7 million public toilet in Noe Valley. Is that a steep price for a one-holer? Does the pope shit in the woods? Noe thank you, please. Apparently there are some crappers down which not even California will flush the taxpayers’ dollars.
• Holy shit! Is Pootie-poot really contemplating a false-flag “dirty bomb” attack that would justify his use of nuclear weapons to pull his nicely roasted lil’ chestnuts out of the fire in Ukraine? If we’re going headfirst down that glow-in-the-dark loo, I’m gonna need some ’shrooms, stat.
Nope, no Russians up there this morning. Good thing, too, as we’re going to be too busy over the next couple weeks to repel hostiles. We have incoming friendlies, and the High Command says I am forbidden to take up arms against any of them.
One of Herself’s second cousins arrives this morning. She apparently has divested herself of some Dallas real estate and is on an extended auto tour of the nation’s Airbnbs. As a Man of the People® who knows that all property is theft, I look forward to hearing the details.
Tomorrow one of Herself’s old friends zooms through. This is a real whirlwind tour — she’s been visiting Santa Fe with another companion and is en route to The Duck! City airport for the trip home, so it’s a hi-bye kind of deal, heavy on the high-speed gossip.
Tuesday brings the regularly scheduled vet visit for Miss Mia Sopaipilla and a second crack at a bedroom carpet installation (the first go-round left a seam I could see in the dark without my glasses). Wednesday, Herself the Elder gets a checkup of her own.
Sometime next week I hope to get Sue Baroo the Fearsome Furster in for her annual physical, if the folks at Reincarnation aren’t swamped working on vehicles that actually get driven.
And the week after that Herself’s eldest sis and a pal drop in for a week’s lodgings at El Rancho Pendejo. I anticipate some medium-heavy eBaying, much raucous recollection of various Texican kinfolks who are straight out of a Dan Jenkins howler, and yes, this is why I’m having the Subaru serviced, in case you were wondering.
If the Russians come calling don’t expect me to be of much use. I got a reverse Alamo going on over here.
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