skulzwerks

  If you haven't noticed of late, machines are taking over corporate America. Oh yes they are. Try and speak to a human at just about any online retailer of shipping concern and all you'll get is one of those annoying and really quite stupid automated call directors. The machines really don't direct anything but they are fucking annoying and outright irritating. The machines can't reason and that poses a significant problem with communication. The machines are programed to deceive and are unable to answer the simplest of questions. I had me an "incident" with FedEx that left me with more unanswered questions than I had when I first contacted the FedEx customer service line. Which by the by, is a complete failure if not a rather offensive joke. After some hard fought full contact pugilism I finally got to speak with a "person" that was alleged to work for FedEx. I have my doubts and I think I was actually speaking to Punji the office boy somewhere in ...

  In the span of just a bit over one week, two apartment (condo) complexes have burned to the ground right here behind the Zion Curtain. Yup, the under construction mess is now a burned toast mess. For all the world to behold. That is IF you're able to get behind the roped off area that was roped off by the police. One in Salt Lake County that is now the city of Millcreek and one in Ogden that is still called Ogden. Seems there's a string of construction sites being burned to the ground. I don't know what's up with that but, burning seems to be one method of ridding a neighborhood of an unwanted development. You see city councils all up and down the Wasatch Front refuse listen to people in the neighborhoods that are affected by this obscene raft of new developments. The city councils all up and down the Wasatch Front are outright owned by developers and so it goes. Neighborhoods and the people that live in those affected neighborhoods are ass out and have no pull wit...

  Mere days away from the big games. The Tokyo Olympics is set to start, or not, in about three weeks. Or something close to that. By way of disclaimer, I don't bother with Olympics anything. Way back in the day the Olympics were for amateur athletes and the competitions were fun to watch. Then NBC got hold of the franchise, those "amateur athletes" became paid performers, the IOC started adding any number of bullshit competitions that aren't even close to 'sport' and that ended that. Kayaking is now an Olympic sport. Kayaking is not a sport. Oh yes and skateboarding. Judas Priest... The Olympics have become a money albatross to ANY city that might want to host the Games. The 'Host City' will be required by the IOC to pony up and up front, gigantic piles of money that the 'Host City' may or may not recoup. Billions and I mean billions of dollars, on account of I believe the IOC requires their money in U.S. dollars. I don't think that the IO...

  The drought and wildfires out here in the West are sending snakes of all varieties into close proximity with humans. You see water has mostly dried up and with the wildfires burning down the natural habitats, well, the critters have gots to go somewhere. So that would be where the humans are clustered with their lawns and pools and cool spaces or cooler spaces, and stuff like that there. Well the animals aren't stupid so they head for where what they need just so happens to be. Antelope, deer, moose, raccoons, rats, rattlesnakes, skunks, and probably all of "god's creatures" are in the urban and suburban mix. The onus seems to be on the rattlesnakes. Dang slithereens be snaking out the woodpile for sure. Here's what you need to do IF you happen on a rattlesnake or any dang snake for that matter. First off, leave the critter alone! Dang snake ain't out to do more than try to get by. Snake might need a drink of water or a rat to kill and eat. Or a mouse or one...

Here it is the last week of June and it's the lead up to the 4th of July. Which is of course a big deal here in the America. The rest of the world couldn't care less. Most of the thinking world wonders why Americans insist on burning shit down come the 4th. On the 4th there will be barbecues and pigging out contests and gunfire and several mass shootings and fireworks that lead to fires breaking out all over the place.   Just about all of those aforementioned fires will be caused by fireworks and the dumb ass people that figure those fireworks are a personal constitutional right. The fireworks are not constitutional or even smart. The Fireworks Retailers Association wants Americans to believe the premise that fireworks are somehow related to the 2nd Amendment. Fireworks are not related to the 2nd Amendment and not even on a wildest stretch imaginable. Americans can be really dense. So, the Apocalyptic Wholly Week lead up to the 4th is a go. The 4th of July is a week from ...

The end of Fridays for the month of June that is. Yup, this is the very last one we'll ever see in 2021. Fridays in the month of June. Yeah that's comedy. At times not very pretty. Or funny. Or whatever. However our world is done with Fridays in June. Now it will be on to July. Fireworks and hot dog eating contests and watermelon and vomiting after those hot dog eating contests and I know that's sort of disgusting but it's true. What, you thought those silly freaks walked away from eating a hundred or so hot dogs in sixty seconds without any consequences or repercussions or regurgitation?  Oh hell no. Soon as the eating contest is over the fools head for garbage cans so they can expel all that synthetic meat and discarded animal body parts. But there will be a winner so, that's what's important. Right. Did you know that hot dogs are made from all the parts of an animal carcass left over after the good meats are sliced away from the bone. Oh yes and chicken lips ...

  It rained! Not a particularly heavy rain but the cement is wet and the grass is wet and it's one of those fresh smells wonderful rains. It's been a while since the last rainfall and even though this rainfall wasn't like the rainfall in Louisiana, it rained nonetheless and that is almost if not quite a good thing. Speaking of rainfall in Louisiana, the Cajun pelicans ought to think about building a pipeline to the way out West and pump that excess rainfall out to where it's desperately needed. Louisiana could turn some bucks and States out West should be more than willing to pony up some cash. I mean it isn't like pipelines aren't being built for really stupid shit like tar sand slurry. Gasoline, oil, nuclear waste, sewage, hair spray for the trump, botox for the trump girls, and secret sauce that McDonalds uses on their Big Mac. Dang pipelines are going in faster than power lines are going up. So why not pump all that extra moisture from America's Southeas...

  According to the National Weather Service, the weekend highs in Spokane, Washington will climb into the low 114's. That's right and the Weather Service says so. The National Weather Service is THE official weather guy for these here United States of Freaking Hot. I used to live in Spokane and the folks up there don't bother with air conditioning. Nope it just ain't necessary. Well air conditioning is necessary now. Thank's to climate change and global warming and all those icky dang doom and gloom naysayers, our Planet is heating up in ways never seem hardly ever before now. Oh the Spokaners are gonna freak out for a certainty. 114 is Arizona hot and that kind of hot just doesn't happen in the Inland Empire. Inland Empire is how the Spokaners and eastern Washington people like to refer to themselves. So next time you happen on one of the eastern Washingtonguers, ask them how the weather is up there in the 'Inland Empire'. They will of course appreciate...

  Time is short on this fine Tuesday so we's gonna haft to keep it short. First up would be machine art. Well of course it is. Then a little musical entertainment for your listening pleasure. Be sure to crank up the volume. path ology - for the benefit of Mr. Kite (no connections to the Beatles or Sgt. Pepper's) - and lastly some Lord Huron. these gentlemen rock - TTFN y'alls. :]

  The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops is trying their damnedest to muscle President Joe Biden into believing as the Conference of Catholic Bishops believes. The Bishops are staunchly anti-abortion and with President Biden being Catholic, well, you can see where this is going. The ConCaBis, I shortened the title for brevity, will instruct all the lower caste Catholic Bishops across America into withholding the sacrament of communion from President Biden and any other Catholics that aren't staunchly anti-abortion as the ConCaBis wants all other Catholics to be. To be OR not to be and that is more a political position than anything relating to Catholic doctrine or Shakespeare. I could imagine the predicament their edict will place on Catholic priests or other churchly prelates conducting a Mass where America's President may happen to attend. President Biden is a genuine and for real Catholic and attends as many services as are possible for a sitting American Pre...

  Sad news from Babylon-On-The-Potomac, President Biden's dog Champ has died. Damn, don't you just hate it when that happens. President Biden's dog Champ will lie in state at the pet capitol rotunda. For a little while anyway. Mitch McConnell is pitching a fit for having a pet dog lie in state anywhere on our continent. I've had to put two dogs down due to old age. Pancreatic cancer or terminal hip dysplasia will do that to dogs. The hip dysplasia left one of our dogs paralyzed and she couldn't move around at all. Our Chance dog got the dang pancreatic cancer and that was that. So it was like having to put down a couple of your own children. Sucks. President Biden's dog Champ simply succumbed to the aging process and there's not a one of us gonna beat the aging process. Champ was thirteen and that's pretty dang old for any dog let alone a German Shepard. German Shepards are quite handsome dogs. Anyway I can relate to how the President must feel. Took me ...

That's right, today is Juneteenth. All the slaves in America were ordered freed by Abraham Lincoln back in 1863. Congress in an act of rare sanity, by the House and Senate, passed legislation marking the 19th of June a federal holiday. Juneteenth it is then. President Biden signed the bill on Thursday and that would have been the 17th of June. Summer "officially" begins on Sunday and that would be June 20th. Was the Emancipation Proclamation an 'executive order'? After careful examination of the presidential facts on the matter, the Emancipation Proclamation was in fact an Executive Order. That hardly matters now as Congress made it a federal holiday and the legislation was signed by the President and Biden made it so. 'Make it so number 1'. So now America can move on from race issues and stuff like that there and finally be at peace. Yeah...right. So what about America's First Nation peoples? It isn't like America's First Nation people were et...

  Well it is pretty dang hot a way out here in the roasty Amerikan West. Why...it's hot enough to fry bacon on a sidewalk. I'm not certain I would eat that sidewalk fried bacon but it's hot. Big news there boy. So CNN is running an article on this very Friday that maintains one Tori Spelling sleeps with her children. Evidently that is a thing and that thing is called "co-sleeping." Tori Spelling is, evidently, somebody that was famous once. Well Spelling is going for famous twice and she's informing our 'need to know' world that she sleeps with her children. Oh right, 'co-sleeping'. Whatever. All in all, it sounds like a perfect set up for incest. However and all incest aside, why CNN would want to give Spelling's tale of probably cause incest any airtime or article space is beyond me. Slow news Friday I guess. Spelling is on the outs with her hubby and hubby is apparently sleeping on the couch. Spelling doesn't exactly say that but it ...

It's hot and it's going to get hotter exponentially and that's the official word from the National Weather Service. The Western United States of Baked America are basking under a seriously serious "heat dome" and that should not be confused with a 'Thunder Dome' which was a maudlin Mel Gibson movie. The West is under "severe drought" and a long-duration "potentially lethal heat wave." It's Death Valley hot and that's no joke. According to the Weather Service this is an "historic heat wave." Gosh...really? According to experts "this heat wave and the exceptional drought in the Southwest are part of a damaging feedback loop enhanced by climate change. The hotter it gets, the drier it gets, the drier it gets, the hotter it gets." That would be meteorologist-speak for no shit. I've never heard the weather referred to as a "feedback loop." Makes sense. Salt Lake has kept temperature records that date...

  Yesterday was hot. Today will be hot. Tomorrow will be hot tamale. Sorry I couldn't help it. A really old joke that, somehow, seems prescient today. It was so hot in Phoenix yesterday...'how hot was it'?...it was so hot in Phoenix yesterday the Phoenicians were able to embalm Joe Arpaio and wrap him up like the mummy he'd become quite some time ago. On a good day Arpaio looks like The Mummy. You know, like that Mummy dude from the movies of the same name? Yeah, that Mummy. Okay so, it's freaking hot a ways out here in the old Amerikan West and what with the dust and the smoke and 1% humidity levels you can desiccate already dried beef sticks in about 3 minutes. You know, turn beef jerky into jerkier beef jerk? Although if some intrepid soul were to make a YouTube video of that exact process, well, it'd probably go viral in about as much time as it might take to render up a video like that. Yeah just like that. I've never ever recorded a hum...

  Way out here in the wide open West, it's freaking hot. Just about anywhere west of the Mississippi is roasty hot. But and this is not much of a but, it is hotter in Phoenix than possibly Hell. Been there did that don't care to ever do it again. So this is gonna be a brief post as if'n there's chores to do, well, you need to do those chores now instead of later when about the only thing there is to do is roast. Hot stuff in the city today boy. So here's the really important stuff for Tuesday June 15, 2021. Well what do you know, the month of June is half over. Next up would be the wildfires started on the 4th of July. Yup. Happens ever year and this year will be no exception drought or not. Machine art - gorge - embryonic town car - drink that cool clear water kids. that is IF you can find some. :/

  The "Westminster Dog Show" was televised on Fox over the weekend. That would be the Fox that's owned by Disney and not the fascist news bullshit Fox. Anyway and so, Fox did a fair job at Disneyizing the dog show and in the end of it, The Westminster 'judge' picked a pekingese named 'Wasabi' as "best in show." That is NOT a dog. The dang thing looks like a dust mop on steroids. Fur growing steroids. You really can't see much of the dog. The genetic mutant is covered in really REALLY long fur and you can't even see the dog's feets. Judas Priest, what the fuck was that goofy ass judge thinking? That is not a dog. The Westminster Dog Show had plenty of real dogs. Damn fine looking dogs at that. Plus the show had some dogs I'd never seen before and that was pretty cool. Bt a pekingese name of 'Wasabi'? Come on Westminster, get a grip. I don't care for yappy little ankle biting wanna-be dogs. Pekingese, chihuahuas, toy poo...

  On this very solemn day when folks should probably be at church and not out at the golf course, Pope Vesuvias the Umpteenth is calling for all y'alls to skip taking a shower just for one day. That might help conserve a little water. Won't help the physical funk that will permeate the earth's ecoclimate but a little water saved can't be a bad thing. We've all got to do our part. Save the whales. Save the rainforests. Save all the coral reefs. Save green stamps. And of course, SAVE THE OLYMPICS! The 'olympics' is gonna happen sick people or not. The "games" will go on and simply to save olympic global face and don't worry about the athletes. They will just have to suck it up and pray for oxygen. Well and negative Covid tests. No one seems to be too concerned about the Japanese people and especially not Japanese government. The Japanese government spent about a zillion dollars preparing for the 2020 Summer Games and we all know how that turned o...

Yes my friends its Saturday. The second Saturday in June and still no rain. Not here behind the Zion Curtain. Well to be quite precise, there ain't not any rain dang near anywhere is the fabled Amerikan West. I read a headline on the Google news page that insisted there's supposed to be rain in Seattle. No surprise there. It just about always rains in Seattle. I've been to Seattle a number of times and every time I was there it rained. Which is probably the main reason people living in Seattle are so grouchy. Its always raining. I've never been able to see Mount Rainer either. Not while being in Seattle. Oh hell, if you've seen one dang volcano you've probably seen them all. Of course I should probably exclude shield volcanos and volcanos that are shrouded in clouds or mist or fog or some damn obscuring stuff like that there. Wait, what was I rambling about? Oh yes, still ain't no dang rain SO Utah Governor Spencer 'baby' Cox and his insipid call to ...

Here we are at the second Friday in the month of June and no rain yet. Spencer Cox's plea for Utah citizens to "pray for rain" evidently didn't hold much water with a 'supreme being'. Oh that's a funny, "pray for rain" and not holding much water. Yeah...funny. So it's still pretty dang screaming hot in the West and there is still not a rain drop to be had. Maybe next month when the "monsoon" is supposed to begin. Maybe. We can always hope or pray or stand on one foot and do the jumpies up and down. To properly do the jumpies up and down, one should hold an egg laying chicken in your arms of course and then jump up and down. Scares the bejeepers out of the chicken and theoretically, the squawking chicken is what entices the rain gods to make some rain. Rain that will hit the ground and not that virga shit that evaporates before it hits the ground. Any shit storm reference would be political and not meteorological. If a shit storm hit...

  Utah Governor Spencer Cox asked all the residents of the State of Utah to "pray for rain." Cox was being dead dang serious. 'Okay mysterious white sky guy, make it rain.' Cox did not ask Utah residents to be polite. Utah and the entire remainder of the American West are in a severe if not prolonged drought and have been for a number of years now. Cox seems to think that the drought will simply go away after making supplications to his white sky god. Planetary precipitation doesn't work that way. However Cox has never been one to let scientific fact and methodology stand in his very narrow cosmic view. Cox is sincere in his request to Utahns. And so there you have the powerpoint presentation of how Mormons approach damn troubling issues. The drought that is plaguing the American West is on an epic scale. Almost if not quite apocalyptic. Apocalyptic is a word that Cox might understand as long as any use of the word is disassociated from science and scientific fact...

  Yes and here it is. Wednesday. A very special day set aside for camels. Not the cigarette. So enjoy this Wednesday as if it might be the very last Wednesday...ever. It just might be. On to CGI.  things that float freely about hither and yon - serenity on the Serengeti - kitty kitty doesn't give a shit if its Wednesday or whatever. :]

  Peace and blessings to all on this fine second Tuesday in June. Okay so, we've all seen the pleasant folk that are harnessed to their handheld devices. Walking around, jogging around, biking around, or simply standing absolutely still in the craziest of places. Heads bowed in reverential fashion as they worship their cell phones and/or whatever the hell they might be packing around and physically unable to break free from. I think that the marketeers of all those devices don't bother to inform people that as soon as they purchase the things, they become trapped in an inescapable slavery as the device fuses itself to the human hand and thereby devolving the human into a social cyborg that is now and forevermore a cyber-slave and e-zombie which almost but not quite resembles human form. And so, the FBI in cahoots with Interpol I believe invented an 'app' that advertised itself as some manner of high-end encryption thingy that was marketed to criminals. Ummm, cyber crimi...

  Sit beside the breakfast table Think about you troubles Pour yourself a cup of tea Then think about the bubbles You can take your teardrops And drop them in a teacup Take them down to the riverside And throw them over the side To be swept up by a current Then taken to the ocean To be eaten by some fishes Who were eaten by some fishes And swallowed by a whale Who grew so old He decomposed...ooh from 'The Point' (1970) by Harry Nilsson animated movie came out in 1971 so this year, 2021 marks the 50th anniversary of the animated release. Killer album, killer movie, and Mr. Nilsson was highly underrated as an artist. Some days I feel exactly like Oblio. And yes, I have been banished. The banishing part really sucks. :/ Let us move on to THE point of today's installment of 'who the fuck really cares anyway'... CGI if puzzled by the CGI thingy...google it. what it is, is what it is - cactus which has a point no doubt - some things are best left to memory :]