Month: June 2010

Dumbing it down

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 15 Comments

Anyone besides me miss the good ol’ days when our political adversaries were smart?

I have disagreed heartily, sometimes violently, with many a Republican over the years — Richard Nixon, Barry Goldwater, my father — but I never thought they were idiots. Even Dickless Cheney must be considered a sort of evil genius, the Doctor Strangelove of the previous administration, which ushered in the Age of the Boneheads with Alfred E. “What, Me Worry?” Bush as patron saint.

But Jesus, these shitheels we hear spouting off without letup in today’s 24/7 news cycle are feebs, dumb as a bag of hair, stupid all the way down to their bones.

• Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, who apologized to BP for its harsh treatment at the hands of Democrat green meanies — and quickly retracted said apology after John Boehner, Eric Cantor and Mike Pence (the holy trinity of fucktardery) called him an imbecile. This is like getting smacked down by Carrot Top, Howie Mandel and Pauly Shore. Barton’s chief corporate donor is (wait for it) Anadarko Petroleum, a 25 percent partner in the Macondo Prospect, which was the site of the Deepwater Horizon explosion.

• Bill Randall, a GOP congressional hopeful in North Carolina, who thinks the federal gummint and BP planned to spill that oil.

• And let’s not forget Michele Bachmann, Sharron Angle, Rand Paul, Haley Barbour, Tom Price, Dick Armey … the list goes on and on and on.

The real idiots, of course, are the people who voted for this lot. I hope they’re enjoying the show. To me, it looks like “Jackass: Dumbing It Down in D.C.”

Fuelishness

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments

The sun has returned, and just in time, too. I got the hell out of the house and onto the bike the past couple days, thereby missing the roundly panned Obama address from the Oval Office, the Limeys finally figuring out that Bloody Sunday was a bloody cock-up, and Apple’s quiet update of the Mini (we’ll be buying one to run the 20th Century Dog videoplex so I can get my ’06 MacBook back for purposes of revenue generation).

The cycling was the usual hodgepodge of on road and off, with one ill-advised, impulsive detour through the Garden of the Gods on Tuesday. How some folks pass a driver’s exam is a mystery to me. In one half-lap of the Garden I encountered three SUV pilots who apparently were incapable of reading the ubiquitous “No Parking” signs stenciled in the bike lane and posted at roadside.

At least one of them didn’t even understand spoken English, because I explained the bike lane/no parking concept to him after watching him park in the bike lane for a photo, leave it without signaling, and then zip back into it again for another snap, confusing two- and four-wheeled traffic equally. Ever try reasoning with a feedlot cow? You get the idea. Dude was 25 meters from a parking lot and 25 pounds shy of that first ton, which I hear is the hardest to lose. At least this one didn’t want to fight.

Today, as a change of pace, I fired up the Vespa for my trip to the chiropractor, who hates it when I show up all sweaty from cycling (makes it hard to get a secure grip for the back-cracking, don’t you know). The carb’ was fouled after a particularly damp and chilly May, but the folks at Sportique set it right and now I’m back to scooting hither and thither, drawing admiring glances from all and sundry.

“Cool scooter,” said a fixie hipster with the iBuds in as we both sat at a stoplight. Yes, indeedy. Don’t have to pedal or nothin’. Burns gas, too, just like a Harley, if at a slightly reduced rate.

After the back-cracking and a bit of cartooning for fun and profit I went for another one of my patented weirdo cyclo-cross rides (concrete, asphalt, pulverized granite, singletrack, etc.). Then I broke out the townie and a messenger bag for some light grocery shopping.

First it was south to America the Beautiful Park for this summer’s inaugural Colorado Farm and Art Market, buying some frozen free-range pork chops from Doug Wiley of Larga Vista Ranch. Next it was north to Ranch Foods Direct for a flatiron steak and some asparagus from Pueblo’s Milberger Farms so I’d have something to eat tonight.

Mind you, this was hardly the Frozen Chosin in the Freezing Season — I’m talking about 10 miles of leisurely cycling in fine weather for a dinner of grilled steak, boiled spuds and asparagus. Wiley’s pork chops are thawing in the ’fridge awaiting Herself’s return from The Big Easy. But my velo-shopping set me to to thinking about that roundly panned Obama speech.

The prez spake thusly:

The oil spill is not the last crisis America will face. This nation has known hard times before and we will surely know them again. What sees us through — what has always seen us through — is our strength, our resilience, and our unyielding faith that something better awaits us if we summon the courage to reach for it.

If we can’t park our SUVs and walk a few meters for a Kodak moment, how strong, resilient and courageous are we? Because the hard times are surely coming. And the SUV pilot who couldn’t be bothered to hump a few meters? He was a Marine.

Swing down, sweet chariot, stop and let me ride

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 7 Comments
When Gabriel's horn blow, you better be ready to go.
When Gabriel's horn blow, you better be ready to go.

More rain. Jesus. I like the way it waits until I’m done with work and getting ready for a ride before it starts coming down in torrents.

You may call this egomania, but I know for a fact that the Universe is out to get me. It’s taken my hair, vigor and girlish figure, shunted me into a dying profession and locked me into a political-science experiment gone horribly awry. And now, to add insult to injury, it’s pissing on me.

But KRCC-FM just played Parliament’s “Mothership Connection (Star Child),” so now I feel much better. “If you hear any noise, it’s just me and the boys, hittin’ it.”

Star Child willing, I’ll be hittin’ it tomorrow, when the weather is supposed to be mightily improved. I need miles. One more day stuck inside reading what passes for “news” in this benighted country of ours will have me trying to put a glide in my stride and a dip in my hip so’s I can hitch a ride on the Mothership.

SLA means ‘So Long, Asshole’

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments
Herself and Your Humble Narrator (Bizarro World versions).
Herself and Your Humble Narrator (Bizarro World versions).

Well, Herself ran away from home today, bound for New Orleans. She claims to be attending a librarians conference, something called “The SLA 2010 Annual Conference & INFO-EXPO,” but Momma O’Grady didn’t raise no fools. I mean, what kind of library outfit would hire James Carville and Mary Matalin as its keynote speakers? Puh-leeze.

I practically invented that really-honey-I’m-working dodge, telling her for years that I was going to Vegas to spend a week covering a bicycle-industry trade show called “Interbike.” And she bought it. Ho, ho. There’s one born every minute, but I ain’t one of ’em, Toots.

So it’s just me and the cats here, enjoying some of the filthiest June weather in recent memory. If it’s not pissing down rain, it’s blowing 40 mph or thereabouts, and sometimes it’s doing both, causing the furnace to click on.

These conditions are not limited to Colorado, by the way — the poor saps racing the Dauphiné Libéré and the Tour de Suisse have had to break out the rain capes. Happily, I do my little bit of business indoors, where’s it’s dry.

Meanwhile, Herself just rang me up and said she can’t find red beans and rice, jambalaya or gumbo at the restaurant she’s supposedly at. Just sushi. She’s not nearly as good at lying through her teeth as I am. Hell, I bet she’s not even in The Big Easy. She’s probably in Vegas.

• Quick, all you librarians — from which work of popular fiction did I steal the headline on this post?