Herself and I were enjoying the usual weekly quail-spotting ride through High Desert and Sandia Heights yesterday when another cyclist caught up to us and we began chatting, as cyclists do.
It being The Duck! City, we found ourselves collecting one of those odd tales that seem to be included in every random encounter with a stranger.
After discussing the beautiful almost-fall weather, other places we had lived, and the critters we had seen, our new riding buddy told us about a neighbor who objected strenuously to hikers tramping along the arroyo that snakes along behind their houses.
So much so, he said, that one day she hid in the scrub with a Louisville Slugger and took a little vigorous batting practice on one of them.
Now, I’ve ridden this arroyo a time or two, or one very much like it in the general vicinity, and I’ve never seen any signs, placards, fencing, or other indication that it was private property. Which I don’t believe it is.
Nonetheless, I told him I’d keep my eyes peeled henceforth.
“Watch out for an old bat with a bat,” he advised.
Having worked in one sports department and drawn more than a few editorial cartoons, I naturally view with alarm. Wit is without value but witlessness is rewarded?
When The Washington Post asked for comment on McClatchy’s abrupt erasure of three Pulitzer winners, the company — owned by Chatham Asset Management — supplied this gem from opinion editor Peter St. Onge:
“We made this decision based on changing reader habits and our relentless focus on providing the communities we serve with local news and information they can’t get elsewhere,” the statement said.
Ho, ho. That’s not the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard, but it’s definitely on today’s leaderboard.
What local news and information that can’t be gotten elsewhere might McClatchy be relentlessly focused on providing in Sacramento at 3:10 p.m. Thursday Duck! City time?
And who says there’s no such thing as good news!
“The stories you’re seeing on the homepage are chosen by our local editors with help from an AI algorithm. The display includes the day’s important stories and recommendations for readers like you.”
Anyway, here’s a random selection from AI’s random selections courtesy of your friendly neighborhood carbon-based life form:
• “Cirque du Soleil returns to Sacramento this summer: Here’s where, when and how to get tickets.” Sounds like a free ad to me, but maybe the AI got comped tickets.
• “More than 40% of Californians say they were affected by recent extreme weather, poll finds.”Do tell. I imagine the other 60 percent stayed home or attended an air-conditioned showing of Cirque du Soleil.
• “Prime Day is over, but there are still deals galore.” Any cut-rate Cirque du Soleil tickets?
Well, thank Boss Tweed there ain’t none a them damned pictures taking up space on the Bee homepage. There’s not much to read, either. But then the only reading that interests hedge funders and asset managers is of the bottom line, and McClatchy certainly seems to have gotten to the bottom of something here.
• Addendum: Speaking of bottoms, pour one out for Anchor Brewing, which is going down after 127 years, the final few under a disastrous foreign ownership. Anchor Steam may have been the first proper beer I ever drank, and the porter was superb.
“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.
The thing I hate most about driving to the airport at dark-thirty, surrounded by one-eyed, high-beam tailgaters, lift-kitters’ lugnuts, and Fruehauf mudflaps, is that I am never the person actually flying anywhere.
Other than to the airport, that is.
I have not flown through the air with the greatest of unease since March 2014, if memory serves. Unless you count my unscheduled short-range trips on the local trails, which cause only physical trauma.
Could I even remember how to navigate the unfriendly skies after nearly a decade on the deck? Unlikely. Also unnecessary. If the trip is under 2,000 miles and involves no bridgeless water crossings I will travel via Air Subaru, where the pilot is unreliable but a close personal friend, we go and stop at my convenience, and all the mechanicals take place at ground level.
But Herself, who is made of sterner stuff, blazes a trail straight through the customer-disservice wilderness without batting an eye.
She did it again this morning, far too early, in order to visit a friend in Minnesota. I was the first stage of her launch vehicle and burned up during re-entry, which necessitated a short nap.
But now Herself is safely in orbit around Minneapolis and I’m back at my desk in Mission Control, where the temps are inching toward triple digits with winds of 25 mph and up.
Say, did someone ship me to Mars while I was napping? Anyone seen Elon lately? You can’t take your eyes off that bozo for a nanosecond. That’s his mission, anyway. I find myself rooting for simultaneous knockouts.
The backyard maple is trying to coax a bit of rain from those clouds.
June 1. Good gawd awmighty. Three weeks until the first day of summer.
Where the hell does the time go?
It doesn’t feel very summery, not yet. We’re slathering on the sunscreen when we go out and about, but highs have only reached the mid-70s to mid-80s, which are very much bearable.
Thus, we have no excuses for staying inside to watch Sleepy Joe and Charlie McCarthy make the sausage. We’ll be eating it soon enough.
It all reminds me very little of what we were taught in junior-high civics classes. Or home economics, for that matter.
What it reminds me of is gym class, specifically the shower portion, wherein a jock occasionally would pee surreptitiously on some poor geek’s leg while distracting him with conversation.
The geek was usually so astonished to be having a chat with one of his betters that he didn’t notice the augmented fluids coursing down his calf until the giggling began.
And then he couldn’t do anything about it anyway.
The geek didn’t yet know about the sausage. He still thought it was just something mom put on his plate with the scrambled eggs and toast. He still thought Bob Dylan was just singing a song.
Mad Blog Media 