Old MacGoblin had a bot, AI AI Ohhhhhhh. …
Hold your water. I’m not dead yet, you ghouls. The dead haven’t the pipes for the lugubrious lung-butter lullabies I’ve been performing nightly for the past couple of weeks.
So, no, this post was not written in memoriam by ChatGPT in goblin mode with art by Lensa AI. It is not about the Tripledemic, the World Cup, who’s gonna die in “The White Lotus,” Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Me Me Mine), Harry and Meghan, Brittney Griner, Ye, or Elon Musk.
What is this post about? you ask. It’s about time I posted, is what it’s about. The Kleenex has been getting all my hot takes lately and you lot have probably begun speculating about whether I left yis any bicycles, and, if not, the location of my final resting place in case you should find yourself in the neighborhood and in need of a vengeful wee.
So, yeah. You’re a bit early for the reading of the will. Please, have a seat. And pass the Kleenex.
Tags: AI, ChatGPT, Kleenex, The Tripledemic
Mad Blog Media 
December 11, 2022 at 9:49 am |
Lord, I apologize for asking “Patrick, ya dead?”
I am more than glad you are on the mend, vertical, and with air, or something, coming out of your nose.
December 11, 2022 at 10:25 am |
Thanks, matey. Respiratory ailments are the acme of tedium. I get one every few years and there’s not much to do other than wait it out, especially in the Plague Years.
The biggest annoyance is throttling back on the old exercise program. You know the drill. For every week you lose it takes about four to get your mojo back. BOR-ing. …
December 11, 2022 at 12:25 pm |
PS: The photo caption is classic! Chapeau.
December 11, 2022 at 11:39 am |
It is good to see your graphical alliterations Mr. O’Grady and that you are recovering from the prods of the chic chics here and the quack quacks there. I suspected that all was still well because there haven’t been any rumblings out of Mount Doom recently. Get better soon and I hope you’re out trail walking soon.
I just read an old NYT Mag article about Odenkirk taking breaks and hiking around the trails in your area every so often. That doesn’t sound so bad.
December 11, 2022 at 12:15 pm |
Thanks, Hoss. I took the first week completely off, doing the usual fluids-and-rest-and-sniveling bit, then started walking the trails a la Odenkirk. Getting outdoors is a real tonic, even if it’s only walking for an hour or so.
December 11, 2022 at 2:04 pm |
Walking is good. Even when I am too lazy or injured to do much else, I walk the dog over at the 140 acre dog park.
December 11, 2022 at 3:01 pm |
Walking is good. Walking is m’little buddy. I’ve walked to classes, jobs, swim practice, jury duty, shops, laundromats, cafés, and nowhere in particular.
The recreational walking around here (on trails) is excellent. I can hoof it for hours without getting bored, though I have to keep one eye peeled for oblivious mountain bikers, dog shit, and loose bits that want to break my bones.
Walking for a purpose is a whole other beastie. Ain’t no such a thing as strolling down to the café for a cuppa joe and a breakfast burrito, for instance, the way I could in Bibleburg. The nearest such is a Starbucks, two miles away on Montgomery via Tramway, and a pleasant stroll it most definitely is not. One wants whiskey after that sort of journey, not corporate coffee.
December 12, 2022 at 3:44 pm |
Walking or riding are good. If you can find a place to do so.
There is a big dustup here about whether to rezone the corner of Zia and Old Pecos Trail as R-3 and build some houses there. The wailing and gnashing of teeth are about supposedly ruining the sight lines of one entrance to Fanta Se.
So I got a ride in yesterday in anticipation of today’s storm. Rode out to the end of Old Santa Fe Trail at Canada de Los Alamos and then on the way back, dropped down Zia to Old Pecos Trail to look at this prized bit of national wilderness area (insert sarcasm icon here). Sure, it is a field and some trees, all of which we want more of, but also homes all over the place. It is suburbia, sorta kinda.
And ruining the entrance to town? I’m surprised anyone even notices an entrance to town. The traffic whizzed by me at probably twice the speed limit and had me shitting my lycra. I doubt anyone cares about the entrance to town. It is all about getting to Sam’s Club, Starbucks, or what have you while texting dick pics to your mistress. Methinks a lot of NIMBY at work here.
December 12, 2022 at 4:12 pm |
Ho, I know that area well. My man Marc Sani has a place just east of there. I wonder what he thinks of the project.
I never considered the Old Pecos-Zia area particularly scenic. I often used Old Pecos to get home to Romero Street after long rides out east — riding I-25 was SOP until some psycho started running people over — and once I caught an excellent draft from a big flatbed working its way through the gears, the dudes on board hollering encouragement at me in Spanish.
Whaddaya got there, maybe two whole minutes of “scenery” once you’ve come off I-25? Assuming you dare take your eyes off the road for a nanosecond? Then, zoom, you’re across St. Francis and onto St. Mike’s, or hurtling down Old Pecos to the clusterfuckery of Paseo de Peralta?
No, I think Santa Fe decided long ago what it wanted to be. At this point we’re simply haggling over the price.
Speaking of price, I wonder what our old place at 134 Romero would sell for these days. Right across from the Ark bookstore, a stone’s throw from the Railyard. No, never mind, I don’t even wanna think about it.
December 13, 2022 at 1:55 pm
No, I just looked it up. You don’t want to think about it. If we had bought today rather than 8 years ago, we would be living somewhere else.
December 12, 2022 at 6:46 pm |
When they run out of water it won’t be worth spit. That’s if anyone can muster up a gob of it with a mouthful of dust. Glen Canyon dam will most likely turn off the turbines this summer.
December 11, 2022 at 4:03 pm |
Greetings from Vietnam 🇻🇳
Sounds like the BUG 🐞🐛🐜 got you. It’s no wonder with the emotional stress and rotating door of guests in an around the passing of Herself the Elder, 😔 . Sure your fans love your daily banter and most of all the lifting of our spirits semi-daily .
I personally am grateful for the humour, wisdom and enlightenment you splash on my blue screen and most important live the smile it puts on my face and joy in my heart eatery time I read it. The memories that come flooding back from the ‘Springs are priceless
Take of yourself and your loving wife
Michael
December 11, 2022 at 6:45 pm |
Vietnam? Damn, son, what was your lottery number? Must’ve been way up there if it’s taken Selective Service this long to snatch you up and dump you in the bush.
I think this ailment is a bug rather than The Bug. I tested negative twice (which of course means exactly nothing) and it feels like the usual respiratory distress I endure from time to time. It’s a kissing cousin to bronchitis and takes about 10 days to a couple weeks to run its course. Thanks for smoking and drinking, Mom and Dad.
Mind you, I also smoked and drank, and took all the dope I could lay my grubby little mitts on, and enjoyed the diet of a Dumpster-diving raccoon for a couple-three decades, so I may share some of the responsibility here.
PNM’s ongoing defoliation of the neighborhood arroyos is probably a contributing factor, too. Their little power project has dumped more particulates into the air than Mauna Loa.
December 12, 2022 at 3:51 am |
Michael, Vietnam is a beautiful place, no? My memories are 52 years old and perhaps not totally reliable. But, the area I was in, around the little village of Song Be on the Be river, was pretty. Except for what we had done to it. I hope it has healed up as I have.
December 12, 2022 at 3:31 pm |
Paddy Me O’Boyo: I’m sure you’ve read “Up Country” by Nelson DeMille. He was an Army LT in Viet Nam, became a best-selling author, then returned to Viet Nam to visit and subsequently wrote the book “Up Country”. If you haven’t read it, recommend you take a look.
December 12, 2022 at 6:03 am |
The old saw is misery loves company but I surely wish you a solid bounce back from your bug(s). I’m crawling out from underneath my rock as well. Despite getting all known shots and then some I tested + for C19 variant and joined the legions of those swearing WTF! Got onto the Paxlovid bus and rode it to a place where I can function ok and even sleep at night. But I tells ya, these cooties don’t leave you with any surplus energy that’s for sure. My doc buddy says the non-Covid virus you may have POG is simple kicking asses everywhere. And about to ramp up as people line up under the mistletoe. Where can I get a NASA space suit so I can ward off the cooties over the next 4 wintry months?
December 12, 2022 at 7:19 am |
Herb old scout, glad to hear you’re seeing light at the end of the tunnel, and that it isn’t the Devil with a Petzl headlamp.
Here in The Duck! City the medicos are stretched to the breaking point (again) so I didn’t even bother trying to see one. I’ve got training logs dating back to the mid-1980s and the respiratory bugs play a bigger role in my personal literature than intervals and hill repeats put together. The whitecoats would either send me to the Walgreens for some Mucinex (been there, done that) or write a scrip for a Zithromax Z-Pak that wouldn’t do a damn bit of good beyond making the bugs bigger and meaner.
If I could hop in a time machine and go back to repair one particular bit of stupidity I would slap the mortal shit out of my 13-year-old self for even thinking about smoking cigarettes. I’m certain that particular addiction did me no favors when it comes to fighting off the Snotlocker Surprise, especially when that bug has had a couple years off to work on its technique.
December 12, 2022 at 12:48 pm |
A Petzl headlamp you say? Wow that takes me back a few decades but it figures Beelzebub would go old school on me. As I recall from a summit of Orizaba in 1983, the old Petzl headlamps were as troublesome and finicky as an opera soprano going through voice changes.
Screw space exploration….let’s go all in on curing acute sinusitis so poor blighters like you and I can breathe without our habitual infections throughout the year. Between the two of us I’ll bet we could fill a few gigabytes of memory with doc visits, meds, more meds, sinus gizmos, CT scans and on and on
December 12, 2022 at 2:45 pm |
As my get well wishing flows downhill from a latitude perspective to POG, I also send some across the great land in your direction Herb. I hope you recover soon and are able to enjoy the delights of the holiday season.
Regarding Petzl’s, I think I still have my quartz bulb Petzl with the three ‘C’ battery pack. It was a loyal illuminator that lasted longer than the two LED replacements that I’ve had since.
December 12, 2022 at 3:19 pm |
I still have at least one Petzl, a Tikka, which gives you both red and white lights. A couple old Princeton Tecs too, one of them held together with a rubber band. What are the Kool Kidz using these days? I see the Wirecutter boyos favor the Black Diamonds.
And yeah, we can send a robot on a hot lap around the moon and back but can’t stop launching snot rockets into our mustaches every couple years? WTF?
December 12, 2022 at 11:15 pm |
We have some kind of upper respiratory bug assailing the inmates at Casa de El Poeta in TX, so we feel for yas.
December 13, 2022 at 1:25 pm |
Here’s hoping thee and thine start feeling better soon. I was not amused to read that while the worst of the cold/flu’s effects generally wrap up in 10 days to two weeks, the cough associated with same can linger for weeks.