Mirror, mirror, on the bar; who’s the loony in that car?

I got back on the bike on Saturday for a short spin to blow the ol’ carbon out of the cylinders.

The roads were crusty and dusty, where they weren’t wet and/or icy, so I needed something with fenders (the Soma DC) plus winter tights and a truly ancient Pearl Izumi hi-viz jacket. Seriously, this Day-Glo duster must date to 1994 or thereabouts. It’s old enough to be living in our basement (if we had one) while we paid off its college loans. “B.A.” stands for “barista’s assistant?” Who knew?

There were lots of hi-viz jackets and tights traversing Tramway, so I guess everyone was as sick as I was of huddling indoors or shoveling snow. But boom, come Sunday, we were back in the icebox and I decided to go for a squishy run instead of a second ride.

This time we got rain, which was a nice change. Don’t gotta shovel no rain.

Speaking of shoveling, I see Wally O’Steele hopes to lie straight to our faces in prime time tomorrow, eliminating the middleman (the “fake news”).

I don’t believe that the networks’ news departments are obliged to broadcast fiction — that’s the purview of their entertainment divisions — so p’raps the usual filters will remain in place.

Or maybe Comedy Central could air this piece of performance art, with Garrett Morris on a split screen, riffing on an old “Weekend Update” bit from “Saturday Night Live.”

It’d be a two-fer — delivering news for the deaf from the dumb.

• Late update: The networks blew the call, from James Fallows.

DT, phone home

January 5, 2019January 5, 2019 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 23 Comments

We’re five days into another lap around the Sun, but we’re flying blind — that big yellow ball is proving hard to locate here in the Duke City.

Though we do have plenty of ice and snow left over from the old year, for anyone who likes that sort of thing.

Our unseasonably wintry weather is a mouse fart compared to the shit monsoon swamping the nation’s capital, though.

And with Darth Cheeto angrily dumping pretty much everyone except his storm troopers onto a dole he won’t pay, and the Chinese more interested in exploring the moon than the wowie-zowies of Apple’s latest and greatest black monolith, you have to wonder how much longer it’ll be before we’re all debating property rights with thigh bones around the ol’ water hole again. Ook ook ook.

That’s right, Star Child, it’s time for the first Radio Free Dogpatch of 2019. Put a glide in your stride and a dip in your hip, and come on up to the Mothership. Mind the yellow snow. …

P L A Y R A D I O F R E E D O G P A T C H

• Technical notes: This episode was recorded with an Audio-Technica AT2035 microphone, a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 USB audio interface, Rogue Amoeba’s Audio Hijack, and a 2012 MacBook Air. Additional jabber via an Audio-Technica ATR2100-USB mic and a Behringer XENYX 1200USB mixer wired to a 2014 MacBook Pro with an external LG 24MP59HT-P monitor, which I used to edit the audio with Apple’s GarageBand. Doc Strangelove and his backup band, Monk and the Monoliths, appear courtesy of Stan “The Man” Kubrick, who has Gone Beyond and will never know. Tires on ice from Freesound.org. Snow-shoveling performed and recorded by Your Humble Narrator using a plastic grain hog and a Sony ICD-UX533, which also did a fine job of capturing the sounds of a blizzard from inside El Rancho Pendejo.