Stand and deliver

“I thought it would never end.”

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?

Nobody expected the Spanish Inquisition, f’chrissakes.

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.

So how about we live in the future? It’s just starting now.

Where’s the beef?

There's the beef
Burgers and T-bones and chuck, O my!

This is what a steer looks like after the people who know its people get hungry and descend upon it, brandishing checkbooks.

Herself and I were share owners in this steer, along with a few other folks who were better acquainted with him, and after a quick out-and-back to Crusty County one-eighth of him resides in our freezer alongside a half-dozen quart bags of Pueblo chile. I foresee a synergy between the two in the very near future.*

Thinking about, acquiring, preparing and consuming food helps keep my mind off the ongoing clown show that is American presidential politics. Rick Sanctimonious is getting wiggier by the minute, practically a character in a Monty Python skit about the Spanish Inquisition. And don’t get me started on the RomneyBot 2012. Last machine I saw perform this erratically was a 1996 Ford F-150. It wound up in a ditch, and I wound up back in a Toyota.

* I actually started this post yesterday and didn’t get around to slapping it up until today. Thus the Larga Vista Ranch chile has already become acquainted with the Crusty County beef in the form of a very tasty pot of chili con carne.