Miss Mia Sopaipilla and I have been enjoying a respite from wall-to-wall politics, with the Donks seemingly in a joyful state of mind along the old campaign trail and the press, or what remains of it, finally noticing in the absence of Joe Biden that it’s the other candidate who is a psycho, serial fabulist, and senile old fool, with one foot in the grave and the other in the nuthouse.
The shit monsoon will resume eventually, of course, once the Cult remembers where it left its copy of the Necronomicon (Classic Comics edition, with a foreword by Lee Atwater):
“Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Jesus Hitler Mar-a-Lago wgah’nagl fhtagn!”
In the meantime, the cycling has been excellent, albeit a bit toasty with the occasional deluge and explosive decompression to keep us on our toes.
I had a back-tire blowout at speed yesterday — hit a scattering of roadside debris that was deeper and chunkier than it looked, with heavy traffic in the lane and thus no way to dodge it. In an instant I was riding the rim and thought I might take a tumble, but managed to wobble to a stop without bloodshed.
It has been a month of flats, on both Steelman Eurocrosses, the Nobilette, and finally the DBR Prevail TT. That last was the worst, because it rolls on 26mm rubber, which is as fat as the rear triangle can handle. Not much in the way of a rim to ride, is what. I’m lucky it wasn’t the front that went boom or I’d have done likewise immediately afterward.
Could be worse, though. A couple folks got swept down the arroyos during Friday’s flash flood, and one of them didn’t land on his feet.
And now, from our Good News Department: The Ethan Allen dealer at Montgomery and Tramway has been replaced by (wait for it …) a Goodwill store, right behind the Filiberto’s without a sign. Economic development, Duck! City style.
“You must concentrate upon and consecrate yourself wholly to each day, as though a fire were raging in your hair.”
—Taisen Deshimaru
When I awakened on the morning of my 70th birthday, March 27, 2024, my heart was still beating. Tick, tock; tick, tock. Fifty-two beats per minute, just like clockwork.
I was pretty sure I wasn’t in Hell. I don’t know if we take heartbeats with us to Hell, but if we do, I expect they’re slightly more elevated, what with the pitchforks and roasting and screaming and all.
Also, it was almost six o’clock, and it seemed I had been allowed to sleep in. I’m almost certain that’s not part of the drill in Hell. If there’s any extra sack time in Hell it’s probably spent in an actual sack, being dipped like a teabag into a giant iron mug of boiling shit that you have to drink instead of coffee in the mornings that look just like midnight, only more so, while a grinning D.I. who looks like a cross between R. Lee Ermey and Hellboy screams at you: “You gotta be shittin’ me, Joker! You think you’re Mickey Spillane? You think you’re some kind of a fuckin’ writer? Now get on your face and give me infinity!”
When I finally crawled out of the sack I was 99 percent convinced I was not in Hell.
For one thing, instead of Gunnery Sergeant Beelzebub demanding an eternity of pushups I found a sweet little kitty-cat purring happy birthday to me. Like Herself, who had slipped silently off to work, Miss Mia Sopaipilla had granted me a little extra catnap instead of yowling me up at stupid-thirty to fill her bowl and/or empty her litter box.
And for another, it was 29° outside, with a dusting of snow on the green grass.
Huh. Not Hell. Albuquerque. Some people think it’s Hell, but everyplace is Hell to someone. Especially in March.
So I enjoyed two cups of coffee instead of a bottomless mug of Lipton Shitfire Hellbroth, attended to Miss Mia, and got back to the bloggery. Tempus fugit. Tick, tock; tick, tock.
Thanks to one and all for the birthday wishes. And apologies to anyone who had 69 in the office pool. I had 30; imagine my surprise.
Here’s a pic of a cute lil’ kitty-cat to distract you from the other one.
Call me cynical (“You’re cynical!”), but I don’t think that other cat, the bedraggled, raggedy-ass orange tom that keeps slinking around the joint, yowling, spraying on the national furniture, and clawing the Stars & Stripes curtains into ribbons, is in danger of being put to sleep anytime soon.
Nossiree, he’s got himself a solid majority of black-robed laps in which to curl up while he awaits delivery of The Big Fish, the one that got away on Jan. 6, 2021.
Fuck me running.
Meanwhile, the playacting continues. Government shutdown: Will they or won’t they? Dueling VIP visits to The Border, that deadly, open-air, razor-wired waiting room where all the brown foreigners go to apply for the jobs nobody else wants. The Senate leadership following the House down the rabbit hole to Wonderland. Gaza. Ukraine. “Dynamic pricing” at Wendy’s.
And now, this: Is a president a king?
I thought we settled that question back in 1776. But as I recall, that king required a few years of rather aggressive convincing before he conceded the point.
The early bird can have the damn’ worm. Especially if it’s a brain worm.
Who needs a cranial parasite before coffee? Not me, Skeezix. What I need before coffee is sleep, and plenty of it.
And I really don’t need a brain worm at midnight, which is about when some noise of unknown origin finished the job of dragging me out of a sound sleep the other night.
Herself had just gotten up for a drink of water and tiptoed back to bed. After three decades of holy macaroni I barely notice this nightly ritual. I drift lazily up toward consciousness, wondering idly: Ghost cat? “Play Misty for Me?” Night fart powerful enough to levitate a sheet, blanket, and comforter? And on the other side of the bed, too. …
But it’s always Herself, having a wee or a drink or a wee and a drink. If it were a gust of the southern wind strong enough to unmake the bed I’d be sporting a fresh bruise or two somewhere.
This time, however, just as she settled back into the sack, came the Mystery Noise.
Ordinarily my practice is to ignore all things that go bump in the night, as hauntings, Clint Eastwood movies, and night farts often end badly. There will be some cleanup involved.
Alas, unable to forgo a bit of vengeance for three decades of midnight wees, I rolled over and asked, “You hear that?”
“Yep,” she replied, burrowing deeper into the bedclothes.
Well. Shit. Check and mate. Outsmarted yourself again, ould fella.
So up I got to prowl around the house in my skivvies looking for … well, your guess is as good as mine. Herself has added NextDoor to her list of online pasatiempos and recently showed me a wildlife-cam video of a mountain lion slinking up a nearby driveway with a raccoon in its jaws. For sure we have had bobcats, raccoons, foxes, skunks, hawks, coyotes, and deer in our yard.
But a peek through various windows and sliding glass doors revealed bupkis.
Maybe it was our in-house varmint, Miss Mia Sopaipilla? I checked her bedroom (a half-bath off the kitchen) but saw no evidence of midnight mischief. She was briefly delighted to have company, then outraged that breakfast was not forthcoming.
And I abandoned all hope of zeroing in on the mystery noise because the hills were alive with the sound of Mia.
Back to bed. Sleep, like wisdom, would not come. The imagination, no longer gainfully employed, was working overtime on threat analysis.
Water heater finally gasp its last? No rusty puddles by its door. Roof failure? Didn’t stumble into the package unit or any ductwork while wandering around below. Owl hit the pigeons nesting by the wisteria? No feathers. Bicycle thieves? Jesus, this isn’t some postwar Italian neorealist film — it’s your basic Yankee jump-scare, meat-in-the-seats, spill-your-popcorn slasher flick. Happily, the only Jason in the vicinity lives next door with his lovely wife, two saucy daughters and several bikes of his own.
Sunrise surprise.
Finally I drifted off to a restless sleep … and then, bam, Herself arose again, this time to go to work and get a start on earning the preposterous amount of money required to remedy whatever hideous tragedy had befallen us during the night. Early birds. Worms. It felt as though they were locked in mortal combat between my ears.
I padded into the kitchen to make coffee, briefly contemplated going back to bed instead, and then glanced out the window.
Wow. Now that’s worth getting up for. It’s almost better than coffee.
Oh, yeah. And the noise? Turns out it was the uppermost cardboard box on a tall stack of same toppling onto an exercise ball that then bounded about in Herself’s home-office-slash-eBay warehouse.
Guess I broke out the ladder and clambered onto the roof for no particular purpose. I will never be smart. Or well-rested.
Mad Blog Media 