Don’t touch that dial! No, seriously, don’t touch it. Eeeyeeww.
I see Prince Maybelline, putative Heir to the Golden Escalator, has managed a rare double in the 2026 Foreign Policy World Series, failing to end a war and queer an election.
Sucks to be him. If there’s ever a Marvel movie about this administration, and there shouldn’t be, I figure Johnny Depp plays the prince in full Jack Sparrow makeup. Stellan Skarsgård will of course bring his Baron Vladimir Harkonnen chops to the role of Addled Shitler, but with an overlay of Evil Otis Campbell from the Bizarro World version of “The Andy Griffith Show.”
And now Shitler is beefing with the pope? He’s a huge fat bastard for sure, but I don’t think he can make the weight for that bout, no matter how many Unhappy Meals he inhales between fat rails of Adderall.
68° yesterday, maybe 63° today … hoo-lawd, this ain’t no way to run a climate, bruh.
It’s barely February and we already have juniper, ash, alder, elm, rumex, and willow pollen blasting us in the nose-holes like ICEholes pepper-spraying citizens.
This makes for fine cycling weather, of course, as long as you’re not drafting someone clearing his beak. The tuque and tights go back in the winter-duds drawer. Ditto the capilene base layers. Out come the short sleeves and arm/knee warmers because, hey, you never know.
But one of the days we’re gonna twist a faucet to fill a water bottle and get nothing but a fart sound, pffffbbbbbffflllhhhh, maybe a little puff of fine sand.
Boy, is Assos ever gonna make bank selling stillsuits.
“Albuquerque? You’re gonna want the Paul-Muad’Dib Signature Model. How much? Ho, ho. If you have to ask, you can’t afford it. Can I interest you in a Liet-Kynes hoodie and a gallon jug of Kwisatz Haderach sunscreen, SPF 666? And maybe a Kleenex?”
And here’s your podium in the 2025 Dust Bowl Derby: Paul Atreides, T.E. Lawrence, and Tom Joad.
The “good” news is, beginning July 1 cyclists in New Mexico can enjoy the infamous “Idaho Stop,” which means they can treat red lights as stop signs and stop signs as yields.
The bad news is, they may not be able to see oncoming motor vehicles through the dust storms.
Just another way to get “dusted” in The Duck! City.
Tlaloc is having a wee this morning, and glad we are to see it. It’s been so dry even the cacti have the asthma.
If we’re really lucky this light rain will become snow and maybe stick around a while, soak in a bit. I can see a dusting up there along the ridgeline.
But the odds of any serious accumulation seem poor, on a par with Southwest Airlines returning your luggage (or you, for that matter) before the Fourth of July.
Still, it seems I was wise to get the ol’ bikey ridey in yesterday. Any outdoor exercise today is likely to involve running shoes and rain gear.
It feels weird to be sitting here, mostly high and dry, as an atmospheric river water-cannons the West Coast and the East Coast tunnels out from under a bomb cyclone.
One of the upsides of living in the high desert, I suppose. The downside being that in a couple years we’ll need “Dune”-style stillsuits for the long, hot hike to the farmers’ market.
I’m not casting a very long shadow around here lately.
Frankly, there’s not been much to report. That little tease La Niña is in town again and I’ve been chasing her around on the ol’ bikey bikes.
While all you Left Coast/PNW types deploy your parasols and Gore-Tex your loins against the Million-Pound Aquahammer, we here in the desert Southwest are enjoying a balmy period which makes us forget that before long we will be drinking our own sweat and tears, like Paul Atreides and his mom in “Dune.”
Yep, we watched Part I on HBO Max, and it was a’ight, pretty damn fine actually, not bad atall atall. Made the 1984 David Lynch flick look even worse than it actually was, which was pretty fucking bad.
Denis Villeneuve’s take on the Frank Herbert novel might’ve worked better as an HBO series; then he could’ve used a scalpel instead of a cleaver to move things along over the course of a season or two. But only a geek like myself, a science-fiction dweeb who’s read the book 1,207,275 times, is liable to grouse about the subtleties steamrollered to make the narrative march.
Too, if a series proved successful, there would be the temptation to milk the rest of the “Dune” tales. (We may have to deal with this in any case.) Me, I lost interest after trudging through “Dune Messiah” and “Children of Dune,” which is a very short trek indeed through the vast Duniverse.
Anyway, Rebecca Ferguson is the best of the bunch as Lady Jessica, and Timothée Chalamet is a whole lot better than I expected as Paul. He brings a whiff of Nic Cage and maybe a soupçon of Christian Bale to the role. Meanwhile, Javier Bardem as Stilgar is definitely channeling Anthony Quinn’s Auda abu Tayi from “Lawrence of Arabia.”
And the Hans Zimmer score is a character all its own, though digging it through our obsolete surround-sound system was like listening to the London Philharmonic performing Metallica over a walkie-talkie.
Still, it beat squeezing into the old stillsuit, flagging down a passing sandworm, and crossing the Duke City desert to the Harkonnen IMAX. We got beverages around here ain’t even been drunk once yet.
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