Some Seattle crosswalks are playing a tune you can dance to. | KUOW Photo/Monica Nickelsburg
As all old comrades know, the political mantra around here is, “Remember, kids, when you’re smashing the State, keep a smile on your lips and a song in your heart.”
So, today’s Hero of the Revolution medal goes to whoever hacked a few Seattle crosswalk signals to play a deepfake of Jeff Bezos’ voice urging caution … not when crossing the street, but when taxing the rich.
Instead of the little robotic voice that tells you to wait until it’s safe to cross, at least five intersections in Seattle last week played something like this: “Hi, I’m Jeff Bezos. This crosswalk is sponsored by Amazon Prime with an important message. Please don’t tax the rich, otherwise all the other billionaires will move to Florida, too.”
Too bad there isn’t a video component to these easily-hacked signals. Someone could add a clip from Monty Python’s sketch “The Ministry of Silly Walks,” with deepfakes of Bezos, Musk, Zuckerberg, et al., screeching about how they’ll all goosestep off to Epstein’s Island, submarine bunkers, or Mars if they’re not left unmolested to use all us little people as household help and/or fuck-puppets.
An overly spicy pasta dinner led to a restless night, and by the time I dragged ass out of the sack this morning temps in the teens plus a biting wind out of the north had done a Pythonesque “Meaning of Life” number on our trees.
A veritable blur of activity was Your Humble Narrator back in his days as a cyclocross promoter..
Herself’s mantra is “We can do anything for 30 minutes.” But she wasn’t here, so I gave myself a day off from the usual outdoorsy pasatiempos. Took some pix, downloaded some software, entertained the cat, fed the birds (no, not to the cat), collected the mail (all bullshit), perused the news (likewise), drank tea.
In short, stayed warm.
There’s something deep in the heart of me that remembers those bitter wintry mornings of yesteryear, which saw me hammering barrier stakes into frozen turf at stupid-thirty and wondering if this would finally be the day when nobody but me turned up to race cyclocross.
Things have been a little “Groundhog Day”-ish around here lately. On a loop, dully predictable, like customer-service hold music or the hourly news.
Thinking I might derive some mental-health benefits from taking a little road trip somewhere, I had the Subaru serviced. But then it struck me that I couldn’t think of anyplace a reasonable drive away in a 20-year-old car that would be a step up from where I already was.
Anyway, long stretches of the calendar had already been spoken for. A plumber was to diagnose and treat a leaky toilet. Herself blocked off a five-day visit to Aspen. Labor Day reared its capitalist head.
And finally, in-laws were inbound — Herself’s two sisters, the only survivors of a much larger expedition that, like Your Humble Narrator, just couldn’t seem to get buckled up and backed out of the garage.
Thus, lacking opportunity and inspiration, I’ve been trying to shake some of the dust off my local cycling routine, which over the long, hot summer took a two-wheel drift into a 20-mile rut.
It went like this: Get up early, have coffee, then some more coffee with toast, then a serious breakfast, and finally dash out for a 20-mile romp through the foothills before Tonatiuh started cooking.
This is fine, as far as it goes, which is not very; about 20 miles per sitting, according to my cyclometer(s). But after a while this sort of repetition devolves from joy into work. Exercise. Basically, gym class, which I always hated.
No wonder people get fat. Bor-ing.
So lately, with Tonatiuh having stepped away from the stove for a spell, I’ve been trying to mix it up a bit.
Last Saturday I joined a few other riders for a bit of paceline practice, zooming down Tramway to the North Valley and then drilling it out to Bernalillo and back. All told it was good for about twice my usual mileage.
Northbound on the bosque trail.
On Tuesday I cranked out a solo 42-miler, likewise down in the valley, but this time south on the Paseo del Bosque trail to just past Interstate 40 and back. I hadn’t ridden the bosque since March; half a year later the trees are starting to show hints of fall color, so I need to get back down there soon.
Yesterday I grabbed a Steelman Eurocross and did a quick hour on the trails in the Elena Gallegos Open Space. Hadn’t done that since mid-August.
Grunting up a few steepish rocky pitches reminded me that I needed to replace the bike’s chainrings, chain, and cassette. Not just from wear and tear, though there’s plenty of that, but mostly due to the mileage on its 1954 engine. Down with the 48/36T chainrings, up with the 46/34T! And the cassette will get four extra teeth at the fat end. Death to the 36x28T — long live the 34x32T!
Today various crucial segments of Your Humble Narrator were complaining bitterly about working conditions and threatening to go on strike, so I decided to take a lazy jog along our shortest foothills loop as a change of pace.
What? Hit the back button. Doritos? See-through mice? Holy hell.
Is this for real? A lactic-acid flashback? Or maybe the WaPo’s A.I. just filed the serial numbers off an abandoned Monty Python script to make the Limey boss-fella blow his breakfast gin out his snout.
Whatever. I think I just got a great idea for a Halloween costume.
We’re all three of us pooped here at El Rancho Pendejo.
Up too late and too early; chores neglected or mishandled; dinners largely inadequate, poorly timed, and eaten in front of the TV; all so we could hear what the Democrats had to say for themselves.
Two things, basically: First, “We’re not crazy.” And second, “Let’s kick that guy’s ass.”
Most of the speakers said it with more grace, wit, and style, of course. But that was the long and the short of it.
And that’s really all I care about at the moment. It’s a big country in a bigger world, with a metric shit-ton of things that need doing, at home and abroad.
But none of them will get done if we don’t kick that guy’s ass. Wear out a six-pack of kneecaps each if we have to. Leave him and his bootlickers tasting our shoe leather until 2028.
And have a few laughs while we’re doing it.
This guy and his punks and their paymasters can’t stand it when we laugh at them. It makes ’em crazy. Well, OK, crazier.
Maybe that’s why Glen Bateman’s speech to Randall Flagg in Stephen King’s “The Stand” sprang to mind after the DNC finally wrapped up this week.
Once again the dark man was making promises he had no intention of keeping, and Bateman couldn’t help himself — he started laughing at him.
“Stop laughing.”
Glen laughed harder.
“Stop laughing at me!”
“You’re nothing!” Glen said, wiping his streaming eyes and still chuckling. “Oh pardon me … it’s just that we were all so frightened … we made such a business out of you … I’m laughing as much at our own foolishness as at your regrettable lack of substance. …”
It was Bateman’s last laugh. Flagg still had followers eager to do his bidding. But Bateman knew Flagg’s dark magic was on the ebb and said so, loud and clear. Heckled the evil sonofabitch, and not from the safety of the cheap seats, either.
If that ain’t a kick in the ass, I don’t know what is.
Now, as you all know, I’m a reasonable fellow. I’ll be happy to hear what an actual Republican candidate has to say, if what remains of the GOP ever manages to resurrect one. Project 2025? Sheeyit. How about some ideas that should’ve been dead and buried years ago, not a lightly reworked Project 1934 from Nuremberg? Or Project 1478 from Spain?
Our lot doesn’t have all the answers, Dog knows. It’s a bigger tent, occasionally with an embarrassment of clowns and more tabbies than lions.
But I like to think our clowns are mostly marching forward, honking and h’yuking and tripping over their own oversized shoes. And who doesn’t like kitty-cats? Either you already know the answer to that one or I’m preaching to the wrong choir.
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