Surprise

“Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.” — Proverbs 16:18

Boy, looks like Yevgeny Prigozhin got way out over his Wagner skis, hey? You need a real big stick to poke the bear, and it seems as though he couldn’t find one when he reached into his fatigues for something to wave at Vladimir Putin. I haven’t seen a bootlegger’s turn that snappy since “The Rockford Files.”

Watching bloodthirsty fascists bumping dickheads over the best way to fuck up someone else’s country is not my idea of light entertainment, especially when I have no idea how much of it is performance art.

Some smart folks say Prigozhin is a dead man walking, a bad dog who snapped at his master and got shipped off to a farm in Belarus where he’ll have the run of the back 40, happily chasing bunny rabbits all day.

Others say Prigozhin caught Pooty-poot with his Stalinist drawers down, the inept Russian army overcommitted and outmaneuvered, and forced him to cut a deal using Belarus boss-fella Aleksandr Lukashenko — who seems to be a bro-brah of both belligerents — as a go-between.

The guys to watch, it seems, are Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov. Prigozhin would like to have their jobs, their stature — and, not incidentally, their nuts for a necklace.

And since Shoigu and Gerasimov are fucking up in spectacular fashion what was supposed to be a cakewalk in Ukraine, maybe Vlad the Impaler is using Prigozhin as an adjunct to the Kremlin’s HR department.

If one or both of them suddenly decides to retire to spend more time in their dachas with the family, Putin gets another KGB merit badge from the media, and Prigozhin starts to look less like Steve Buscemi and more like Steve McQueen.

Doesn’t mean Putin won’t croak him too, of course. Talk about your toxic work environments.

DT, phone home

We’re five days into another lap around the Sun, but we’re flying blind — that big yellow ball is proving hard to locate here in the Duke City.

Though we do have plenty of ice and snow left over from the old year, for anyone who likes that sort of thing.

Our unseasonably wintry weather is a mouse fart compared to the shit monsoon swamping the nation’s capital, though.

And with Darth Cheeto angrily dumping pretty much everyone except his storm troopers onto a dole he won’t pay, and the Chinese more interested in exploring the moon than the wowie-zowies of Apple’s latest and greatest black monolith, you have to wonder how much longer it’ll be before we’re all debating property rights with thigh bones around the ol’ water hole again. Ook ook ook.

That’s right, Star Child, it’s time for the first Radio Free Dogpatch of 2019. Put a glide in your stride and a dip in your hip, and come on up to the Mothership. Mind the yellow snow. …

P L A Y    R A D I O    F R E E    D O G P A T C H

• Technical notes: This episode was recorded with an Audio-Technica AT2035 microphone, a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 USB audio interface, Rogue Amoeba’s Audio Hijack, and a 2012 MacBook Air. Additional jabber via an Audio-Technica ATR2100-USB mic and a Behringer XENYX 1200USB mixer wired to a 2014 MacBook Pro with an external LG 24MP59HT-P monitor, which I used to edit the audio with Apple’s GarageBand. Doc Strangelove and his backup band, Monk and the Monoliths, appear courtesy of Stan “The Man” Kubrick, who has Gone Beyond and will never know. Tires on ice from Freesound.org. Snow-shoveling performed and recorded by Your Humble Narrator using a plastic grain hog and a Sony ICD-UX533, which also did a fine job of capturing the sounds of a blizzard from inside El Rancho Pendejo.

First blow, then snow

"Forget about that California dam, hon', we got a real problem right here at home."
“Forget about that California dam, hon’, we got a real problem right here at home.”

Well, it ain’t much of a snow. But the blow more than made up for it. We had to corral wandering bits and pieces of lawn art yesterday, which beats watching Stephen Miller lie on the Sunday shows like a creepy baldheaded teenager caught with a spank mag under his mattress. (“Uh, I read it for the articles? And anyway, the terrorists put it there!”)

Where does Beelzebozo find these alleged people? If you saw Miller lurking around a school playground, you’d probably call the law, amirite? The only video of this penis with ears should come from a vice cop’s lapel cam.

“Hands where I can see ’em, pally. And let’s get the mouse back in his house, a’ight?”

Meanwhile, the National Security Council is taking on Stooge-esque overtones, and not of the Iggy variety, either. Who knew we’d still be dealing with Russian stooges 53 years after “Dr. Strangelove?”

“Sir, you can’t let him in here. He’ll see everything! He’ll see the Big Board!”