Month: October 2016

Fears of a clown

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments
Send in the clown(s).
Send in the clown(s). (Lifted from fanpop.com)

Goddamnit, I guess we’re gonna have to watch tonight’s “town hall debate” between The Hilldebeast and whichever Ronald McDonald McTrump decides to show up, if any.

I can’t say I’m happy about it. Herself and I had agreed before the first matchup had even ended that we would watch no others.

But when I see Insane Clown Pussy furiously digging himself ever deeper into a hole, my natural inclination is to stand on the lip and watch. Maybe pee a little. OK, a lot. Call it “trickle-down journalism.”

Charlie Pierce says this big orange chicken has been a long time coming to roost, and I believe him, having once worked in a newsroom full of young, apparently intelligent people who were all hellbent on voting for St. Ronnie of Hollywood.

Will he lay a golden egg on stage, or will the end product be something entirely different, yet all too familiar? Don’t touch that dial.

The sky is crying

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 12 Comments
Can you see the tears roll down the street?
Can you see the tears roll down the street?

This is what we have today. Heaven must be weeping over the stumbles of the Chosen One, who spake loudly and profanely of his desire to be fruitful and multiply with ladies of the female persuasion to whom he was not bound by holy matrimony.

Some of the lesser rats are leaping over the side of this leaky, gold-plated yacht, but it’s too early to tell whether they’ll swim to safety or sink like furry little stones.

The fattest rodents remain on deck, however, with dampened pinkies and flared nostrils testing the wind. Is that water down there or just more of the shit we’re already in, only deeper?

Paul “Lyin'” Ryan is stuck in a Shylockian crisis of his own making (“O, my daughter! O, my ducats!”). He wants it bad in 2020, but does he look principled or premeditated if he rescinds his support now, despite all the other crimes against the Republic committed by Agent Orange?

It’s enough to give a man the blues, for sure.

Welcome Matt

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 7 Comments
Definitely a hint of fall in the air, and in the trees as well.
Definitely a hint of fall in the air, and in the trees as well.

One of my brothers-in-law recently took a job in Florida — the east coast, naturally — and looks like the welcome wagon has finally rolled up.

No worries. As Hurricane Matthew came a-calling he evacuated westward to a town just outside Chez Mouse, and with any luck at all, he’s just getting his windows washed for free. My bro’-in-law, not Mickey. The sis-in-law is still up north, wrapping up their affairs there.

Here in the Duke City the mornings and evenings have grown brisk, but the days themselves remain stellar. I went for a nice hike in the foothills yesterday so I could get a little October sunshine on my head. And today I plan a mountain-bike ride while everyone else in town is milling around at the balloon festival.

If I want any gasbag action, I’ll check the news when I get home. Whoops, there it is. 

Good news and bad news

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments
Classic Fat from the last millennium. Some things never change.
Classic Fat from the last millennium. Some things never change.

First, the good news: Julia Moskin at The New York Times serves up a modern recipe for chicken pot pie that looks absolutely scrumptious.

The bad news, also from the NYT: Whatever you weigh right this minute, you’re only gonna get fatter as 2016 and its various holiday seasons waddle to their belt-loosening denouement. I blame Obama. Also, the chicken pot pie.

The worse news: “Anything that happens in these next 10 weeks, on average, takes about five months to come off,” says professor Brian Wansink of Cornell University’s business school.

Does that include the election? Oh, God, no. I need some comfort food. And I think we all know what it might be. …

Well, bust my balloons

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 15 Comments
"Where the hell are all the balloons?"
“Where the hell are all the balloons?”

Herself and I cycled over to the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta yesterday to see what it was all about.

Mostly it was all about RVs. Seriously. We didn’t see a single, solitary balloon. But we did see about eleventy-bazillion dollars’ worth of houses on the hoof, taking up all the ordinarily vacant acreage for miles around.

Turns out that we arrived between shows. There’s a whole lot of not much going on between 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. I saw more action during the last day of Interbike, f’chrissakes.

Still, it was a nice ride, exactly 23 miles; the bike paths there and back were not bumper to bumper; and our recreational vehicles took up less parking space once we got them home.

Later we learned via The New York Times that the increasingly deranged Agent Orange apparently pays less income tax than a freelance scribbler. So, of course, do GE, Boeing, Verizon, Bank of America, etc., et al., and so on and so forth.

Lady Liberty must be feeling a bit like Lili Von Schtupp, with all these cowboys giving her the business. So … tired.