Month: June 2010

Ghosts in the machine

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 3 Comments

OK, folks, bear with me here — the WordPress install on this site is getting buggier by the moment, like a GI’s skivvies in a Thai whorehouse, and I may have to attempt a software update or a shift to a new hosting provider.

I’ve backed up the database and the entire WP folder, and the automatic update is just sitting there in the admin tool, winking frantically at me like a strumpet with a crack habit. But the thing is, I have a clusterfuck with the VeloFolks tomorrow and a visitation by the mom-in-law on Thursday and a BRAIN deadline on Friday and the Tour de France on Saturday.

So what I’m sayin’ is, don’t be surprised by a bit of weirdness — like comments shutting themselves off without authorization from the Home Office — and a lot of radio silence in the next few days. It ain’t that I don’t love youse, y’crazy bastids, youse.

If the whole shebang should blow up in my face, look for me at Mad Blog Media (The Freeware Edition) until the dust settles. Peace out.

Good for what ales you

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments
That's kind of a funny-lookin' beer there, son. All pink an' stuff. That from San Francisco or sumpin'?
That's kind of a funny-lookin' beer there, son. All pink an' stuff. That from San Francisco or sumpin'?

The Fourth of July and that little three-week jaunt around Frogland are nearly upon us, and strong drink is a must, if only to endure the faux patriotic blather from both right and left and the endless keening of LANCE LANCE LANCE from the cretins in the media. This last is certain to be especially irksome since Big Tex has announced (via Twitter, of course) that the 2010 edition will be his final Tour.

But back to important stuff, like booze. We’ve been deep into the rosés for a while now here at Dog Central, and since I don’t recall whether I passed along Eric Asimov’s paean to this oft-derided beverage and am too lazy to search the site for it, I’ll chuck in a link to his June 6 Wines of the Times column.

But the Fourth means beer to the average Yank — and so does the Tour, to the average Belgian — so here’s a link to Asimov’s latest Beers of the Times column, which takes up the American pale ale.

I was surprised to see the Flying Dog Doggie Style Classic Pale Ale take top honors from his tasting panel. I used to drink it in some quantity come summertime, in part because of its Ralph Steadman label, but lost interest after encountering hoppier beers, like Lagunitas IPA. Even the much-lighter Mirror Pond Pale Ale (a summertime fave of mine) seems a step up from Doggie Style. But it’s been a while, so maybe it’s time to revisit an old friend.

Asimov’s fondness for Dale’s Pale Ale continues to mystify. Maybe I just got a bad 12-pack that one time, when I was camping in a place that forbade glass, but I’ve come to believe that the best thing about Dale’s is that after you’re done drinking it, you can shoot at the cans.

Lies, damn lies and statistics

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 1 Comment

Few people speak out of their asses more frequently than a Repuglican senator. And even among that lot, John Cornyn is renowned for his extended, deafening and incomprehensible solos upon the butt-trumpet.

Steve Benen at Political Animal caught Cornyn farting higher than his ass on CNN today. He was claiming that the deficit had more than tripled since the final year of the Daffy-Fudd administration. Not so, retorts Benen:

“The budget deficit Bush/Cheney left for Democrats to clean up was $1.3 trillion. It’s unclear exactly what this year’s shortfall will be, but it’s likely to be around $1.5 trillion. To suggest that the deficit has ‘more than tripled’ is to suggest that John Cornyn is strikingly bad at arithmetic.”

Meanwhile, the guy who had been in the Senate nearly as long as I’ve been alive, Robert Byrd of West Virginia, has died. He did a lot in that half-century, some good, some bad, but I’ll always remember him for his opposition to the Daffy-Fudd adventurism overseas. Writes Adam Clymer:

He denounced the 2002 Congressional resolution authorizing Mr. Bush to make war on Iraq. It “amounted to a complete evisceration of the Congressional prerogative to declare war,” he wrote in “Losing America,” “and an outrageous abdication of responsibility to hand such unfettered discretion to this callow and reckless president.

Truer words, etc.

Fire on the mountain

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 6 Comments

Man, the smoke around here last night was wicked — we had to close all the windows to keep the house from smelling like a Cub Scout campfire.

Now a slurry bomber has crashed, grounding the fleet, and the fire folks are using helicopters instead. Lovely.

And the VeloNews.com website has developed some sort of hiccup just in time for me to clock in. Is this Monday or Sunday?

Bringing the crazy

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments
Since the Communists are mostly historical curiosities, maybe it's time to register The Crazy. Especially if they own firearms.
Since the Communists are mostly historical curiosities, maybe it's time to register The Crazy. Especially if they own firearms.

As a resident of Bibleburg, I am most definitely living in a glass house when it comes to throwing my little stones. We are zoned for dingbattery here on a commercial scale, welcoming the likes of Industrial Christianity, Doug Bruce and Michelle Malkin with open arms, both of them on the right side of our sociopolitical body.

But no matter how powerful is the champ, there will always be contenders. Like Rutherford County, Tenn., where District 6 House candidate Lou Ann Zelenik (The Crazy) cites Martin Luther King in her opposition to a Muslim community center. (Full disclosure: I am related by marriage to more than a few residents of Tennessee, and while they are all batshit crazy, at least the majority of them are Democrats.)

Then there’s North Carolina, where Rep. Sue Myrick (The Crazy) says Hezbollah is partnering with Mexican drug cartels and may be planning “Israel-like car bombings of Mexican/USA border personnel or National Guard units.”

Leave us not forget Texas, where The Crazies want to reinstate sodomy laws, end the state lottery and federal sponsorship of pre-kindergarten schools, require that evolution and global warming “be taught as challengeable scientific theory,” and demand that Congress get US out of the UN — an old John Birch Society maxim once seen on billboards in these parts — and evict the global body from our shores.

The Birchers once opposed the fluoridation of the nation’s water supplies as a Communist plot to poison America. Maybe it’s time to start spiking the fluoride with a little lithium.