If your idea of “fun” is having Cadet Bonespurs go all Rolling Thunder on you for having an overly noisy barbecue, that is.(Sorry, Waymo.)
“Let a hundred Stooges bloom!” as our Dear Wiseguy, Chairman Moe, has taught us. While that fat toddler plays with his (our!) Army men in DeeCee this Saturday, there will be a No Kings rally in The Duck! City. And judging by the map of scheduled events there is probably one in your neck of the peckerwoods, too.
No torches, no pitchforks — just a nationwide woo woo woo woo woo. A virtual finger-poke in that toddler’s piggy little eyes.
If he tries to get tough we’ll break out the big guns: The Groucho Marxists.
And remember, kids — when you’re smashing the State, keep a smile on your lips and a song in your heart:
Hello … you must be going. You cannot stay, I came to say, you must be going. It was a shame you ever came, you best be going. …
The oozlum, clearly a cousin of Ed Abbey’s fabled Malaysian Concentric Bird (see “The Monkey Wrench Gang”), flies backwards. This is either so it may admire its own lovely tail feathers, or because while it has no idea where it’s going, it likes to know where it’s been.
And when startled, it will fly in ever-tightening circles until it vanishes up its own asshole.
Though the oozlum clearly has the chops to be our national symbol, it must be noted that the bald eagle remains a distressingly apt depiction of the modern American character. In criticizing the bird’s inclusion in the Great Seal back in 1784, Franklin actually made a strong case for it in 2025. In a letter written to his daughter, Sarah Bache, Franklin wrote:
For my own part I wish the bald eagle had not been chosen as the representative of our country. He is a bird of bad moral character. He does not get his living honestly. You may have seen him perched on some dead tree, where, too lazy to fish for himself, he watches the labour of the fishing hawk; and when that diligent bird has at length taken a fish, and is bearing it to his nest for the support of his mate and young ones, the bald eagle pursues him, and takes it from him. With all this injustice, he is never in good case, but like those among men who live by sharping and robbing he is generally poor and often very lousy. Besides he is a rank coward: the little king bird not bigger than a sparrow attacks him boldly and drives him out of the district. He is therefore by no means a proper emblem for the brave and honest Cincinnati of America, who have driven all the king birds from our country, though exactly fit for that order of knights which the French call Chevaliers d’Industrie.
“Bad moral character … sharping and robbing … a rank coward.” Good ol’ Ben. Still giving us the bird after all these years.
We got 0.28 inch of rain yesterday in about 28 seconds, so, ’ray for us.
The deluge will not resolve our water issues, though it ended the struggles of at least one poor soul whose last known address was a washout down near Edith and Roy.
We stayed indoors where it couldn’t get us. Well, mostly.
Herself took her chances with an early run. I held out hope for a bike ride, and if I’d moved fast I could’ve had one, too.
But fast is not my speed. So instead of risking a good soaking I dithered, waffled, and procrastinated, and then finally tottered out for a short run and never even got my shoes damp, though at one point I was jogging up a sandy arroyo that feeds into that long flume ride downtown.