“You have the right to remain stupid. …”
The final entry in The Duck! City trilogy that began with “Breaking Bad” and continued with “Better Call Saul” stars “This Fool” co-star Frankie Quiñones as Solomon Peña, a failed GOP candidate accused of ordering — and participating in — drive-bys on Democratic officials’ houses and offices.
Hilarity ensues. Or not.
Look for the premiere, “Don’t Recount … Reload!” on Court TV.
“I bet they send me those shitty Marlboro Lights, too.”
So, crypto bro Sam Bankman-Fried, who is charged with perpetrating “a fraud of epic proportions” involving billions of actual dollars, strolls out of the federal slam and flutters home to Cali to live with mommy and daddy, who are on the hook for his $250 million personal recognizance bond.
My mommy and daddy would have said, “We’ll send cigarettes.”
I’d rather eat than tweet.
This was my last tweet, almost five years ago.
Looks like I was ahead of the curve for a change when I flew the coop back in 2017. Someone should tell Elon to quit shitting in his birdcage and go to Mars already.
Roll another one. …
The Suits have come for your ’shrooms.
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.
Imagine my surprise. The douchenozzle suspected of driving his Ford pick-’em-up into the masters race at Bike the Bluff in Arizona apparently has a history of overly happy motoring, among other things, reports The Associated Press.
Courtesy Arizona Department of Corrections.
Shawn Michael Chock, 35, has quite the rap sheet, according to Maricopa County’s online records. Some gentle soul matching his name and age has been fucking up like a champ since 2007: Aggravated assault, disorderly conduct with a weapon, three DUI-related charges, shoplifting, and violating parole, before finally doing a year and a half in the stripey hole beginning in May 2013.
Maybe he wanted to go back? Some people like it in the joint, I hear. I didn’t care for my one overnight stay in Denver City-County, but there’s no accounting for taste. Could be he’s the Aryan Brotherhood’s version of the Brown Truck Dude and got the word that his kindred needed a buttload of one thing or another.
“Just get your ass in here, Shawn, we don’t care how. Earl needs a cellphone.”
Perhaps he wanted to appeal his case to St. Peter? Didn’t quite make it to the Pearly Gates, did he? But then that Ford of his was full of bike parts and bullet holes and neither it nor Shawn was rolling all that well there at the end.
Meanwhile, we have a half-dozen cyclists in various hospitals around the Southwest who probably would like to know why the hell this had to happen to them. We’ll all know more than we care to before long, I expect.
Jordan Alexander Barson. | Photo courtesy Mohave County Sheriff’s Office
Remember this fine fellow? Charged with taking out a group ride on U.S. 95 in Nevada, killing five, injuring four?
If Jordan Alexander Barson is a good boy — that means no more running over cyclists while crazed on meth, mister! — he can be paroled after serving just 10 years of the 40-year sentence he received on Wednesday.
So says defense attorney Damian Sheets, anyway. District Attorney Steven B. Wolfson claims Barson will have to do at least 16 years in the Graybar Hotel.
But Wolfson and Sheets agree that the Nevada Highway Patrol intercoursed the penguin on the blood draw; the DA described it as “less than perfect investigative work,” while the defense called it a violation of Barson’s rights.
The upshot was a deal that saw Barson cop to just two counts of DUI resulting in death.
Donna Trauger, whose husband, Tom, was among the dead, got right down to cases. She accused the stateys of “embarrassing negligence” and “victim-blaming,” and said that “justice was not served.”
The NHP had no comment. Hell, I’m nearly speechless myself. There was a retired cop on this ride — Michael Anderson, who did 22 years with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department — and you’d think that if the system worked for anyone it would work for an ex-cop and his friends.
“We got it, Mike. This guy is gonna gonna do a century over this.”
Nope. Sixteen years. Unless he runs over a trusty with a laundry cart or something.
“No one wants to work anymore.” And yet somebody posted this sign at a place of business. ’Ees a puzzlement, to be sure.
Here’s an interesting story. Not “interesting” in the sense that it was solidly reported, written, and edited, which it was not. Interesting in that it calls into question the business model of the fast-food industry.
The story — headlined “We’re competing with unemployment” — focuses on the hiring problems that outfits like Fresquez Companies, Twisters, and Sonic-Inspire Brands are having locally in Year Two of The Plague®.
Back in the day, when newspapers still had copy desks, a cynical old rim rat might have wondered at some volume whether the corporate types quoted in the piece had coordinated their tales of woe.
Says one: “Why would anybody want to, I guess, start at a minimum-wage job when they can be earning more money … on unemployment?”
Adds another: “People are making a lot more money being unemployed than employed, and the world is coming back to dine-in and eat-in a little bit at a time, so the stimulus really paused people applying to jobs.”
And a third: “I think it’s pretty easy to connect … unemployment benefits to it. I think a lot of us feel like a lot of people have chosen not to go back to work yet, because they’re still receiving the benefits.”
Well, shucks. It makes a man’s eyes damp, for sure.
My first question was, “How many of these struggling companies have received SBA Paycheck Protection Program funds or some other form of governmental assistance to make ends meet in these troubled times?” The story doesn’t say.
Nor does the reporter speak with any current, former, or potential employees. The one nod to working people came in a quote from OLÉ Education Fund executive director Matthew Henderson, who said: “Essential workers have risked their lives to keep New Mexico running during the pandemic. Some have decided, however, that the risk to their family’s health is not worth the poverty wages and lack of benefits that many employers offer. Don’t fault workers for refusing to be exploited.”
When I was young and even dumber than I am now, I briefly dated a single mom who availed herself of the various forms of governmental assistance to be had at the time. She was always strapped for cash, and since I was young and dumb, I asked her why she didn’t just get a job.
She explained patiently that the kind of job she would be able to get wouldn’t begin to pay the bills, much less the cost of child care while she worked. So she chose to keep jumping through the hoops of public assistance and raising her child. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
How many potential recruits for the Paper Hat Platoon have decided to stay home, collect assistance, and help their kids navigate remote learning with the goal of giving them a future that doesn’t involve pitching greaseburgers through windows at the Duke City’s drive-thrus? I mean, you don’t need a Ph.D in Google Search to find horror stories about the life and times of the fast-food worker.
I suspect this story may have had its roots in the photo above, posted on Twitter by a local TV reporter. Snapped at a local Sonic, it shows a sign reading: “We are short staffed. Please be patient with the staff that did show up. No one wants to work anymore.”
Wrong, pendejo. They just don’t want to work for you.
I had a ton of Hawaiian-style shirts once, before I checked my privilege as a second-rate copy editor at a third-string newspaper.
Gosh. Another fashion option out the window.
I guess I’ll have to go back to my top hat and tails. Mahalo, pendejos.
Aren’t some of us just kind of stretching a bit to find things that piss us off? I mean, I was a Maoist, f’fucksake, and even we were less easily enraged.
We were also less nattily attired. But god damn it, nobody ever accused us of being “fashionable embodiments of the history of American colonization, imperialism and racism.” ¡Venceremos!
What is this, a remake of “McHale’s Navy?”
At least Ernest Borgnine and Tim Conway were funny.
“Hard about, Mister Miller! New orders from Cape Treason.”
* More apologies to Randy Newman, and also to the crew of the Nimitz, who must be getting dizzy.
Jordan Barson (courtesy Mohave County Sheriff’s Office)
The driver of a box truck that careened into a group ride in Nevada last week has been charged with five counts of DUI resulting in death, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
The Nevada Highway Patrol identified the driver as Jordan Alexander Barson, according to the newspaper. He also faces six counts of reckless driving resulting in death or substantial bodily harm, and one count of DUI resulting in substantial bodily harm.
The dead include Erin Michelle Ray, 39; Gerrard Suarez Nieva, 41; Michael Todd Murray, 57; Aksoy Ahmet, 48; and Tom Trauger, 57. The injured include Jerome Ducrocq and Jose Vasquez.
Court records did not indicate that Barson had been arrested as of Wednesday morning, according to the newspaper.
Patrick O'Grady has been making stuff up since, well, forever. He started doing it for money in high school and didn't quit until he retired in 2022. (To be honest, if you waved enough Dead President Trading Cards at him, he might do it for money again.) Until then, this blog is his pro-bonehead work. For more on Your Humble Narrator, click the comic.
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