There’s a whole lot going on in the world lately, and I’ve been doing my best to ignore most of it.
Turn your radio on.
Instead of breaking news, I’ve been breaking wind, metaphorically speaking — which is to say, farting around with Radio Free Dogpatch again.
Hey, what could I tell you? The Voices have been bored, and that’s always bad news.
We’ve been having a meeting of the minds as to exactly why we want to belly-flop back into this sonic kiddie pool, a shallow backwater that drains feebly and sporadically into the Great Audio River.
But apparently we’re at least one mind short.
However, we do not lack for Voices. And they all have their own microphones because somebody around here got a little acquisitive a couple years back. If we don’t pipe them into your heads, they’ll keep hanging around in ours.
All of which means, yes, yes, yes, it’s time for another episode of Radio Free Dogpatch, where the air is never definitively dead, it’s just not at all well.
Our friendly neighborhood water wizard John Fleck got to make a big wake by the boat dock in The New York Times this morning, taking California to task for “trying to protect its outsized water supply at the expense of others in the region. …”
Those others, in case you were wondering, include Your Humble Narrator and his friends and neighbors in New Mexico, Colorado, and Arizona.
John writes:
If we approach the challenge with a sense of fairness and shared sacrifice it will be possible to save the West that we know and love.
From your lips to God’s ears, as my people say. What was the line about learning to share in kindergarten? Maybe California needs some remedial education. That juicy Colorado River pie has become something of a dried-out shit sandwich, and we’re all going to have to take a bite.
Check out the entire essay, and follow John over at his own little adobe hacienda on the banks of the Great Digital River.
In comments Pat O’B reminds us that Sprinter, Wing, or Wang, whatever you call it, is not done with us quite yet.
The forecast for the Greater Duck! City Metropolitan Area calls for a rough aul’ day in the barrel, starting right about now and lasting until 2 a.m. tomorrow. From the National Weather Service:
Southwest winds 30 to 50 mph with gusts of 60 to 75 mph expected. … Damaging winds will blow down trees and power lines. Damage may occur to mobile homes, roofs, sheds, barns, outbuildings, and fences. Widespread power outages are expected.
Oof. Batten down the hatches, mateys.
We’re semiprepared for Apocalypse Junior.
The lanterns are charged, and the headlamps and flashlights all have fresh batteries, with a candle lantern in reserve.
Jugs of filtered water abound, and a few days of nonperishable edibles are close at hand, so we won’t have to eat the neighbors. Yet.
The ovens will be out of commission, but we have a gas cooktop, and a two-burner Coleman for backup.
Staying warm might be an issue — we have a Mr. Heater Portable Buddy and two fireplaces, but have never used either of them. We could end up warmer than we like (on fire) or colder (dead). Thus, the three-season sleeping bags in reserve.
We have battery banks for our iPhones, for all the good that will do us, because our cul-de-sac is a sinkhole that cellular signals float past unmolested unless the phones can mooch off the wifi.
Finally, my main MacBook Pro is plugged into an APC battery backup. This is likewise useless since without power the Innertubes will deflate, and trying to use the iPhone as a hotspot (see “cellular signals,” above) is the hee, and also the haw.
At least I can take copious notes on the End Times. I hope the alien archaeologists who stumble upon my chronicle are fluent in Snark.
• Musical note: The headline is taken from the Planxty tune of the same name. They know something about the shite weather in the auld sod, so they do.
Mostly winter, with a hint of spring at lower right.
The weather is a tad confused. Is it spring? Winter?
Maybe we should call this between-times season “Sprinter.” I’ve been seeing a lot of its four-wheeled namesakes lately.
And while ordinarily this would lead me to reflect that this violates O’Grady’s First Law of Economics — “Anybody who makes more money than me makes too fucking much!” — I don’t really care.
I don’t have lust in my heart for a Sprinter. Even if I did, I have no place to park one. Anyway, I live in New Mexico, where nobody knows how to drive but plenty of people know how to steal.
Maybe once a Sprinter collects a few whiskey dents, parking-lot sidewipes, and improvised cardboard windows it becomes a less attractive target? Who knows?
A sampling of the APD’s Twatter feed.
Not me, Skeeter. My RV is a scratched-and-scraped 18-year-old ’Roo with a tent, sleeping bag, and two-burner Coleman in the back. Also, and too, AWD for when the weather finally makes up its mind and decides it’s winter again.
Which it was, on Wednesday and Thursday. And I only went outdoors to broom snow and buy soup fixin’s. No cycling, not even running.
But on Friday Herself and I managed a couple miles of jogging along the foothills trails — not too cold, but squishy underfoot — and yesterday I sacked up, dragged out a bike with fat tires and fenders, and went for a 90-minute spin.
I’m always amused to see The Duck! City’s response to a few inches of snow. God love ’em, the road crews spread more sand on one day than Bibleburg has used since my family moved there in 1967.
And of course it all winds up on the shoulder, in the bike lane. Hence the fat tires and fenders.
It must be frustrating, trying to save Burqueños from themselves. The road crews know these people can’t drive a straight line on dry roads at high noon on a sunny day. Building speed humps and roundabouts, installing traffic cameras and radar trailers, spreading sand over ice and snow … this is like trying to teach a bullfrog to sing “Ave Maria.”
Burqueños have better things to do. And they will do them while they are driving.
Some leadfoot passed me at warp factor five or so on Juan Tabo the other day. In the right lane. The right turn lane, to be precise.
I saw him coming up fast in the passenger-side mirror and thought, “OK, here we go. …” And sure enough, my man rocketed straight through the intersection at Montgomery and just kept on keepin’ on. I kept the mirror on, but only just.
No idea what the rush was. The liquor stores weren’t about to close, and nobody was chasing him that I could see. No sirens, no gunfire. Maybe he’d just stolen the SUV from the Lowe’s parking lot and wanted to see what it could do.
One hopes he got a chance to test-drive the air bags and found them inadequate. And by “one,” I mean “me.”
So, yeah. No Sprinter for Your Humble Narrator. I know in my heart of hearts that as I was driving the shiny beast off the lot with the dealer plates still on I would hear a thunderous bang at the rear, pull over and stop to see what the actual fuck, and find a stolen Honda Civic parked on my sofa bed, leaking oil all over the Pendleton White Sands quilt.
The driver would be polishing off a tallboy and a text while his lady friend had a wee in the toilet-shower combo. Tugging a Sig Sauer from his waistband, he would mumble, “Shit, out of beer. Take us to the liquor store. There’s something wrong with this car.”
This is what comes of watching zombie shows on TV.
Turn your radio on.
Radio Free Dogpatch keeps trying to claw its way out from under its tombstone, and I guess I got tired of beating on it with a shovel and burying the sonofabitch again.
Basically, I just wanted to see whether I (a) could remember how to do a podcast after taking two years off, and (2) could keep from getting too deep into the audio-technical weeds.
There’s something about having a dedicated “podcast studio” with a Zoom PodTrak P4 hooked up to a MacBook Pro lashed to a 27-inch monitor and Hindenburg and cables running ever’ whichaway that leads to delusions of grandeur, is what. Chiseling away at the stone, you think you’re Michelango revealing his David, but what you you wind up with is Clarabell honking his horn.
Anyway, a small notion caught up with me while I was running the trails on Tuesday and when I got home I just kept on running with it. Ira Glass is still out there somewhere. Dude just couldn’t keep up. Sucks to be him, hah?
Anyway, this is the scenic route to announcing: Yes, yes, yes, it’s time for a special Undead Episode of Radio Free Dogpatch, another toot on the rusty tin whistle souring the globe-spanning, star-studded orchestra that is podcasting. My heartfelt apologies in advance.
P L A Y R A D I O F R E E D O G P A T C H
• Technical notes: I didn’t know how into it I’d be after two years off, so I set up shop on the dining-room table, using a Shure SM58 mic and the Zoom H5 Handy Recorder. Editing was in Apple’s GarageBand, with a sonic bump from Auphonic.Zapsplat,Freesound and Voice Memos on the iPhone provided the music and sound effects, with the late Donna “Hot Stuff” Summer singing backup for Thomas “Keep the Change” McGuane, who remains very much with us.
Mad Blog Media 