iStone
Cleanup in Private Sector B
Today we’re gonna take a break from governmental stupidity and focus on idiocy in the private sector, where they expect results.
• From Digiday: “RIP contributor networks as a publishing shortcut to scale.” Translation: “We’ve squeezed the last dollar out of amateurs who’ll work for the byline. Time to get back to fucking over the pros.” This is what we call putting the “con” in “content.”
• From The New York Times: Palm Springs residents who have made fortunes off their vacation paradise are shocked, shocked! that others want to do likewise. Money quote, from a design blogger with a huge Instagram following: “You want to stay places that are Instagram-worthy because you are living your life as content.” Um, no.
• From The Verge: Henry David Thoreau’s “Walden” has been adapted into a video game. “Rather than love, then money, than fame, give me truth. And a really big pair of thumbs.”
Fire burn and cauldron bubble
Well, given yesterday’s deluge of shoes in Washington, D.C., if Friday continues in its traditional role as a day for dumping bad news, well … buckle up, folks, and break out the Florsheim bumbershoot.
Yesterday we had:
• Jefferson Davis Beauregard Belvedere “Come Here, Boy” Sessions simmering nicely in a cauldron of his own bullshit.
• Mike Ha’pence popped for using a private AOL email account for public business (and getting hacked).
• Freshly minted EPA chief Scott Pruitt doing likewise, but with an unhacked Apple account.
• Jared Kushner (and pretty much everyone else in the Beelzebozo administration) meeting with the Russians.
• The GOP playing hide-and-seek with its health “care” legislation.
And the hits just keep on coming.
Well, sheeyit. If this’ere witch hunt keeps finding witches all the doo-dah day, I propose someone introduce a measure to change the name of the nation’s capital to Salem.
A nose for news
Woke up around 3 a.m. feeling as though I had spent the night snorting chain degreaser, convinced my brain had liquified and was seeping out of my snout onto the pillow.
Further sleep proved elusive as Herself arose to shower and the bathroom iPad commenced making news noises. It seemed King Donald the Short-fingered had not actually ordered anyone executed during his performance before the Congress, and the media were as usual focused on packaging rather than content. A golden chest overflowing with excrement is still a box of shit, no matter how many air fresheners are working overtime in Pundit Glade.
Jesus. These people. They install a low bar in the Dark Alley of Presidential Address Expectations, and when Beelzebozo manages to clear it without twisting a cankle they all go rushing after him to see where such Statesmanlike Leadership and Gravitas will take us next and boom! Down they go in a heap, and what oozes out of their bandaged skulls and onto the Innertubes afterward looks worse than what was coming out of mine until I swallowed a Claritin-D 12 Hour and a couple-three-four mugs of hot caffeine in various flavors.
Wipe your noses, shitheads. Try not to use your sleeves.
Stormy mental weather
I’m not very interested in what I have to say lately.
There’s just something about February. It’s a short month, but marks the start of every-other-week columns and cartoons for Bicycle Retailer and Industry News.
Too, the weather is often inhospitable, which can be a problem when shooting video for Adventure Cyclist.
And every so often we find ourselves adjusting to a New World Ordure, which can be irksome.
So, yeah. Apologies, but I’ve been taking a few continuing-education courses at good ol’ STFU.
While in residence I read a 1955 interview with James Thurber in The Paris Review. Thurber — an FBI target dubbed “prematurely anti-fascist” by Red-hunters — was discussing what he called “this fear and hysteria” of that period in American history and how it was affecting his writing:
“It’s hard to write humor in the mental weather we’ve had, and that’s likely to take you into reminiscence. Your heart isn’t in it to write anything funny.”
Speaking of stormy mental February weather, I see King Donald the Short-fingered is to address the multitudes this evening. P’raps instead of watching that excremental extravaganza we shall borrow a teenager from one of the neighbors, immerse ourselves in some novel off-the-cuff and inconsequential lies as a change of pace.
Or maybe we’ll re-read “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.”
Mad Blog Media 