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’ve been awake since 3:30. Four hours later Tōnatiuh still hasn’t shown his face above the Sandias.
Yet I am in a remarkably good mood. Why?
Because … more light soon come, Bubba; more light soon come.
The December solstice arrives at 2:48 p.m. Duck! City time, the Sun God’s advance scout galloping over the hill, herald of longer days and shorter nights.
Just think: If the Earth weren’t as crooked as some of the people who walk its surface, we would be denied this annual morsel of good news. Foolery, sir, does walk about the orb like the sun; it shines everywhere.
The furnace grumbles to life at 5:33 and requires exactly five minutes to trudge uphill to its planet-friendly yet unimpressive thermostatic peak of 65 degrees.
Still, this is more than twice as warm as it is outside, so I should be thankful. I have a furnace — actually, two of them, one for each side of the house! — and a great big bed with lots and lots of covers. Also, a house to keep them in. It has been the better part of some time since I begged a kip on a couch or in a pew, or shivered in a greasy fartsack under the topper of a pickup truck.
This momentary lapse into gratitude doesn’t stop me from thinking it might be time to consider sleeping in pajamas, or at least a T-shirt and shorts. Maybe a cap. Sweatpants. And wool socks. Sixty-five degrees is one thing on a white sandy beach and another in a dark bedroom at the foot of the Sandias, squinting through the blinds at the banana moon night-lighting the back yard.
Over coffee I note that E. Long Muskrat has yet to quit shitting in his newest sandbox, though his own survey — “Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll.” — went strongly against him.
While giving him the thumbs down last night Herself asked innocently, “Can we vote more than once?” She has not been locked out of her account. Yet. Me, I maintained radio silence.
It doesn’t matter, not really. CEO or no, the Muskrat would still own the Twithole and would have to hire some poor sap to run it for him.
That would be a dream job, hey? About like being handed a push broom and being told to sweep up the debris in the Monfort lane through the Big I at drunk-thirty on Black Friday.
Or maybe it’s more like being assigned to clean the hyena cage while the hyena is still in it. Before feeding time.
I don’t know why I find this penny-dreadful drama amusing. I haven’t used the service in five years. In fact, I’ve croaked nearly all my social-media accounts, save for LinkedIn, which I keep around like an ugly sweater I’m never going to wear, no matter how cold it gets.
There’s just something fascinating about watching the gods behaving badly. They always do. Gods have the morals and manners of spoiled children pitching a bitch in the Wholeazon Amafoods while mom tries to find the sell-by date on a plastic tub of organic baby arugula.
It’s not enough that the gods are omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent — no, they have to have our undivided attention, too.
It’s sad. But also amusing. For a while, anyway.
“Wow, this is an adult human being. Second richest in the world — No. 1 until the shitposting trouser stain started dicking around with a new toy without reading the owner’s manual — and he’s acting out like a hormonal teenager with a marble-sized nose zit and two left feet fuming at all the cool kids dancing on TikTok.”
Just wait until Orange Julius Caesar softshoes into the multimedia spotlight again today. His Lardship Musk Mellon Esq. will probably try to buy the Internets and shut them down.
I don’t know who’d loan him the money for that indulgence. Not Orange J, that’s for sure. Fool needs a new pair of size-7 dancing shoes.
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.
The War on Christmas continues apace. And leading the charge: preachers?
From The New York Times:
This year, church leaders are grappling with what may seem like an odd dilemma: Christmas Day falls on a Sunday for the first time since 2016, and that’s a problem.
“Christmas morning and Sunday morning are sort of in tension with each other,” said Timothy Beal, a professor of religious studies at Case Western Reserve University. “Most people who are churchgoers think of Christmas morning not as a religious time but as a family time: stockings and brunches and staying in your pajamas until midday or later.”
In other words, Ho ho ho, Baby Jesus. Happy birthday and all, but come Sunday morning we’ll be in our jammies, worshiping that golden plastic calf from the Church of St. Costco. Feed it four D-cells and it moos “Away in a Manger.”
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If you happen to find yourself with a little change left over after your holiday shopping’s all finished, please consider kicking a bit of the extra to Charlie Cunningham’s GoFundMe, which Jacquie Phelan uses to help underwrite his care following an awful crash in 2015. She would welcome your warm wishes and cold cash.
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And finally, John Fleck comes away from a Sin City water convo more hopeful that the states can reach some class of a compromise over Colorado River water use — management based on inflows rather than reservoir levels — before the feds step in.
Now that would be a useful Christmas present. Not this year — but maybe next?
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