Not enough moral fiber in the Fox News management diet.
“We’re gonna need a bigger plunger, hon.’ This one doesn’t want to go down and stay down.”
Two takes on Tucker Carlson’s fall from grace: Alex Shephard at The New Republicthinks it’s funny, and David A. Graham at The Atlantic thinks that whoever replaces him will be even worse.
Me, I don’t really have a dog in this fight. The only time I ever watched the bowtied little prick was when Jon Stewart punk’d him on “Crossfire.”
* The headline is a bit of bathroom humor from “Panama,” by Thomas McGuane.
Yesterday we finally saw the first hummingbirds of spring 2023.
We’d heard the little buzzbombs elsewhere in the ’hood — Zzzzz! Whizzzz! — but until yesterday none had appeared at our backyard feeders. We’d actually hung up the feeders once and then taken them down again due to a lack of customers.
I’ve been hearing and seeing quail for a couple weeks now but the hummers have proven elusive. And who can blame them? With weather advisories ping-ponging between fire alerts and freeze warnings this springtime has been screwier than GOP pestilential theater.
Some of us contemplate replacing our gas appliances and infernal-combustion vehicles with electrical gizmos, whizbangs, and comosellamas in order to help stave off (or at least slow down) global environmental catastrophe.
Meanwhile, in one go, a single wealthy narcissist can spray Mother Earth with a money shot of 15 million pounds of liquid methane-oxygen propellant, a jillion bits of shrapnel from an exploding 120-foot-long dick-missile, and uncounted gigatons of Texas sand, soil, and Christ only knows what … and then call it a learning experience.
I know what I’ve learned. My little electric kettle ain’t gonna git the cattle to Abilene, is what.
Get up, make coffee and toast, watch E. Lawn Mulch blow something up and call it a success, start a new loaf of bread, tidy up the kitchen, police Miss Mia’s litter boxes, follow Herself to the Honda dealership to drop off the CR-V for its annual physical, write something.
It’s 4/20, but getting stoned is not on the agenda. E. Lawn may light ’em up on April 20, but not Your Humble Narrator. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt.
Sheeeyit, I got higher than Starship back in 1973, man.
These two make quite a pair. It’s a pear tree! That’s a joke, son!
Spring isn’t a date on the calendar. It’s more of a feeling. A warm one, if you’re lucky.
For me, the vernal equinox is rarely the starter’s pistol. I don’t hear that big bang until Herself asks whether her Soma Double Cross is ready to ride after a long winter’s nap on its hook in the garage.
Turn your radio on.
By that reckoning, spring arrived in The Duck! City on April 9, Easter Sunday.
It was a few degrees short of ideal — I like to think of spring as that time when I can unsheath the arms and knees, charge those solar batteries, collect a little free vitamin D.
But if we had to roll out in arm and knee warmers, so what? As you know, you go to ride with the spring you have, not the spring you might want or wish to have at a later time.
And exactly one week later the experience gives rise to a spring-feverish episode of — yes, yes, yes — Radio Free Dogpatch. The doctor will see you now.
P L A Y R A D I O F R E E D O G P A T C H
• Technical notes: Once again the sonic environment was less than ideal at the indifferently equipped Infernal Hound Sound studios, so I thought I’d try an audio experiment. This episode was recorded using an Audio-Technica ATR2100-USB microphone (now discontinued) hooked via XLR to a Zoom PodTrak P4, which in turn was connected to my 13-inch 2014 MacBook Pro. Recording and editing was handled via Hindenburg Journalist software (since rechristened Hindenburg Lite), with a sonic bump from Auphonic. Music and sound effects are courtesy of Zapsplat (shoutout to David-Gwyn Jones for “Looking Back Over the Hill”); the Free Music Archive (a snappy salute to the U.S. Army Blues for “Walk That Dog”, from “Live at Blues Alley”); Freesound, and Your Humble Narrator.
Mad Blog Media 