Any doubts as to what month it is got put on ice this morning. We awakened to light fog, freezing mist, black ice on the roads and sidewalks, temps in the 20s and a 30-car pileup that briefly closed Interstate 25, which is how Bibleburg officially welcomes the onset of winter.
Even Turkish, who considers being confined indoors the equivalent to a dip in the Lake of Fire, declined to take his morning constitutional. After the usual post-breakfast yowling for freedom he splayed briefly on the glazed sidewalk like Spider-Man on a wall, then rushed straight back indoors to sleep off the horror … the horror. …
Me, I’m trying to figure out where I can set up the Cateye trainer in this midget dwelling so I can take a little healthy exercise without risking frostbite. Herself has annexed the basement in the name of Lebensraum and every other square inch is packed tighter than four fatties in a Smart car. There’s the garage, but that sucker is a giant Igloo cooler — I swear it’s colder in there than it is outdoors. Plus it’s full of bikes, parts and lawn-care implements.
Don’t tell me I’m gonna have to suck it up and go outdoors. I saw how much the Turk’ liked it, and he’s wearing a fine fur coat.
With last night’s light snow and this morning’s kerfuffle over the Nobel Peace Prize, Turkish decided it would be a perfect day to debut his one-cat show, an impression of Darth Cheney in exile that he calls “Why Am I Sitting On My Ass Out Here In the Cold When I Should Be Killing Something?”
The score is a work in progress — shotgun blasts and a friend screaming, lightly armored Humvees encountering IEDs, the shredding of the Constitution by a flabby pair of bloody hands — so you’ll have to make do with the visual for now. An imperfect performance, to be sure, but so are they all these days. As the villainous theatre cat Tom told the cockroach Archy in “The Old Trouper” by Don Marquis:
the stage is not what it
used to be tom says
he puts his front paw
on his breast and says
they don t have it any more
they don t have it here
• Late addendum: Kevin Jones of Mother Jones.com, who does a weekly cat-blogging feature as part of his daily blog, recently asked readers for pix of special guest cats to plug into his newsletter, Drum Beat (you can subscribe to it here). Turkish is the second guest cat, with a special guest appearance by Miss Mia Sopaipilla. Shots of table cream all around!
That monumental clap of thunder you heard this morning was the sound of millions of Repuglican assholes slamming shut at the news that Adolf Hitler Benito Mussolini Mao Zedong Pol Pot Josef “Uncle Joe” Stalin Barack Saddam Hussein Obama has won the Nobel Peace Prize.
Now, I can sympathize with those who may consider this award a tad premature. It’s not unlike stopping the Tour on stage 5 and saying, “Aw, fuck it, give the jersey to Michael Barry. Nice guy, hard worker, real good sport. Chapeau. OK, guys, let’s ride on to Paris, whaddaya say?” There are a few other guys in the contest, and lots of summit finishes and hairpin descents and road furniture between here and there.
Still, it works just fine as a review of the eight-year-long rendition of “The Horst Wessel Song” as performed by the evil organ grinder Darth Cheney and his monkey. Perhaps the award should be renamed this year as the Holy Shit Are We Ever Glad the American Executive Branch Is No Longer Insane Prize.
WIth the Festival of Zappadan rushing down upon us like a runaway Orange County Lumber Truck, we present a 22-year-old Frank Zappa playing a pair of bicycles with Steve Allen on “The Steve Allen Show,” backed by the house band and a pre-recorded audio tape. Thanks and a tip of the Mad Dog Willie the Pimp hat to Charles “The Central Scrutinizer” Pelkey.
Lance Armstrong says he's excited about his three-year association with Michelob Ultra, because it complements his active lifestyle by injecting it with a shitload of money.
Just think — if Bristol Brewing made worse beer and more money, they could have Lance Armstrong as their celebrity spokesperson.
Instead, the former Shiner Bock drinker will be pimping Michelob Ultra, one of the jillions of brands belonging to industry titan InBev, and a concoction described as “a great-tasting beer with lower carbohydrates and fewer calories.”
Uh huh. I haven’t sampled an Anheuser-Busch product in many a moon, since I discovered what actual beer tastes like. But I suppose that given the proper incentive — a Brinks truck full of greenbacks and free Michelob Ultra backing up to the house every Friday — I could learn to lower my standards, too.
As a much younger dog I would drink pretty much anything as long as it was cheap — Falstaff, Buckhorn, longneck Buds. But as it is written in 1 Corinthians 13:11: “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man I put away childish things.” Including watery beer.
In my dotage, I favor IPA from Bristol, Lagunitas or Second Street Brewing in Santa Fe, when I happen to be in town. Anchor Steam or Anchor Porter. Guinness, of course. And the Deschutes beers are all excellent, whether you’re talking ale, porter or stout. I’d recommend any of them for free.
In fact, I just did. No wonder I remain so distressingly unwealthy. I will never be smart.
• Extra-credit snark: This is not Anheuser-Busch’s first marketing coup, of course. More Americans can recognize the Budweiser Clydesdales than can find Afghanistan on a map. I recall enjoying a semantic analysis of the original Budweiser jingle in college. Don’t recall if it was in journalism class or semantics, but the gist of it was that the jingle said absolutely nothing about the beer — it was a series of empty statements punctuated with references to Anheuser-Busch trademarks.
Think about it for a second:
“When you say ‘Bud,” you’ve said a lot of things nobody else can say.” (That’s because ‘Bud” is a trademark.)
“When you say ‘Bud,’ you say you care enough to only drink the King of Beers.” (“King of Beers,” another trademark.)
“There is no other one.” (One what?)
“There’s only something less.” (Than what?)
“Because the King of Beers . . .” (That trademark again.)
“. . . is leading all the rest.” (Of what?)
“When you say Budweiser — you’ve said it all.” (The complete name, which is also a trademark.)
