A samurai in a latrine; outside, his three attendants hold their noses. Colored woodcut by Hokusai, 1834. Credit: Wellcome Collection. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
Thanks to one and all for standing guard outside my little shithouse this week.
I was called to jury duty again, and this time they actually required me to do something other than show up and wish I were elsewhere, running or riding a bike.
The judge sprung us Thursday afternoon, and though yesterday was my last official day in the three-week-long jury-selection barrel, I knew I would not get hauled in again. So I went for a leisurely 5K run. Today I’ll ride a bike.
And sometime later I will have some thoughts about my four days as a juror. Though Roy Blount Jr. beat me to a few of them in his essay “I Always Plead Guilty,” from the collection “What Men Don’t Tell Women.”
Especially when he wrote: “Fucking up also comes from doing things that deep down inside you know better than.”
Don’t bother calling the John Laws … they know where I am, even if you don’t.
It’s been a long week, and bloggery has gone walkabout, along with cycling, running, thoughtful meal selection, preparation and consumption, feline management, etc., et al., and so on and so forth. Nothing to be concerned about, just busy busy busy and largely disconnected from most of the tools of my former trade.
With any luck at all I should be back in the saddle tomorrow.
In the meantime, consider this post what my fellow bloggers call an “open thread,” suitable for discussing/debating whatever happens to be floating your boats.
Why is a Steelman Eurocross better than a BMW 7 Series?
Well, for openers, it’s a Steelman Eurocross. And you can’t just slide on down to your local Steelman dealer and drive one off the lot, because Brent Steelman isn’t making them any longer.
Even if you could, its touchscreen wouldn’t be showing you an ad for “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” the instant you climbed aboard, which BMWs are doing. My Steelman Eurocrosses ain’t got no steekeeng touchscreens. Oh, sure, they share an ancient Cateye Velo 8, but it doesn’t say shit to me because it saw what I did to Herself’s sportswatch with a claw hammer when the fucker started beeping and wouldn’t shut the hell up.
I knew this day was coming the first time I pulled into a gas station for a tank of the cheap stuff and the pump started shrieking advertising bullshit at me. I nearly drove off right then and there, but I was running on fumes, and figured that if one station was doing it, they all were.
And they all are.
The Eurocross “touchscreen.” One button, no Spider-Men.
So, guess what? If six-figure BMW 7 Series sedans are inflicting advertisements upon their owners — and nobody at BMW gets fed feet first into a wood chipper over it — your $24K Kia Shitbox will soon be pitching Happy Meals, weight-loss programs, and boner pills at you.
My 2005 Subaru Forester? Not so much. The only screen in that sucker is the windscreen, as the Brits call it. The clear one I look through to see where in the hell is it that I’m going.
This is absolutely insane, especially for cars that people own. If you own a car and an ad is shown in your car, you should get paid for the ad. And you should need to agree to it first. BMW is supposed to be a luxury brand, and one meant for driving enthusiasts. This is so absurd it’s hard to believe it’s real.
“I thought this was a fan, but it’s not moving and I don’t feel any cooler,” says Miss Mia Sopaipilla.
Another day, another record.
Yesterday’s high of 101° pipped the previous record of 100°, set all the way back in 1944, when America was still fighting fascists rather than electing them.
Every day brings a new high, or a new low, depending upon your perspective.
Now it seems we want to start a pissing match with Brazil. Jaysis H., etc. As if things aren’t already stupid-hot enough around here.
When it came to nut up or shut up, guess what Sens. John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina did?
Lemme give you a hint: They won’t have any trouble hitting the high notes in choir come Sundays.
The two alleged senators had refused to bless Todd Blanche’s bid to rock The Big Chair at Justice unless the former mouthpiece for You Know Who committed in writing to (a) dropping a $1.8 billion slush fund for traitors, fart-sniffers, and ring-kissers, and (2) getting a hammerlock on the issuance of “Get Out of IRS Jail Free” cards for blood kin and pretty much anyone else with a whiff of damp, wrinkly ass on their breath.
And then hey presto! Blanche pops back with assurances scribbled on — hell, who knows what? One of Whiskey Pete’s bar tabs or Ka$h P’tui’s monogrammed buttfloss — and these two fold like Mar-a-Lago beach chairs in a category-five hurricane.
Killjoys dismiss Blanche’s assurances, written or otherwise, as “a political solution to a political problem, not a legally binding document.”
The original terms of the documents creating the fund said it “may be modified only with the written agreement of the parties” — a reference to Mr. Trump, his sons Eric and Donald Trump Jr., the Trump Organization and specific government agencies.
Mr. Blanche’s order, however, is a government document signed only by him. “So absent any new executed agreement that they enter into, all of this is meaningless as a matter of law,” said Matthew Platkin, a Democratic former New Jersey attorney general now in private practice, representing various people suing over the fund.
“Law.” It is the hee, and also the haw. To this gang of brigands, it’s the law that is meaningless.
Mad Blog Media 
