Month: August 2023

Smug shot

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 21 Comments
Asshole by Vonnegut
This is not Ginger Hitler’s mug shot. It is Kurt Vonnegut’s drawing of an asshole, from “Breakfast of Champions.”

To absolutely no one’s surprise, Ginger Hitler immediately set about monetizing his Fulton County mug shot, because, hey, lawyers don’t work for free, unless you stiff ’em, which he does, which is why he has to (a) keep hiring new ones and (2) find some way to monetize things the rest of us might prefer to forget, like mug shots.

But that’s not the funny part.

The funny part is, according to Intelligencer, that one of the underfed cells in his brain trust, Chris LaCivita, fired off an aggro and illiterate warning on social media to anyone else hoping to turn a buck off The Face That Launched a Thousand Shits without having received “prior permission,” to wit, the copious wetting of a voracious orange beak.

“If you are a campaign, PAC, scammer and you try raising money off the mugshot … WE ARE COMING AFTER YOU. …”

This is strictly the hee, and also the haw. As law prof Betsy Rosenblatt told Spectrum News Cleveland, it’s likely that the Fulton County Sheriff’s Department — not the famously litigious Moue That Roared — holds the copyright as the creator of the image.

Also, according to Reuters, the Fulton County court distributed the mug shot to media outlets, which are always — especially in these dark days — eager to accept a handout, even one as fugly as this.

Adds Intelligencer:

Team Trump loves threatening to sue people, but its follow-through rate is pretty low. Plus right now Trump has far bigger fish to fry than the person selling Trump-mug-shot toilet paper on Etsy.

Hey, you never know. So many lawyers, so little money. …

Ash, holes

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 30 Comments
Fire on the mountain? Nope. Smoke from Canada.

The haze around here lately is courtesy of our neighbors to the north, who continue to be on fire.

Down south, Georgia finds itself contending with an unnatural disaster, as a conga line of douchebags waltzes in and out of the Fulton County sneezer after cutting bond-and-release deals of various weights.

Miss Mia Sopaipilla supervises the landscapers.

Here at El Rancho Pendejo we have our ongoing landscaping project, which involves neither conflagration nor sedition.

As it enters an extended ditch-digging/pipe-laying phase I thank the gods that I stumbled into journalism, much of which can be done sitting down, in the shade.

Still, I’d gladly stand for hours in the Georgia sun if I got to see the Tangerine Turd get printed and mugged, especially if he came off looking half as frazzled as Rudy the Mooch. Dude looks like a drunk goat trying to shit a rusty tomato can.

‘Trails are gonna wash out in this rain. …’

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 30 Comments
This is not the work of Hurricane Hilary, which should carve a much wider swath through the high desert.

COVID finally came for Ken Layne of Desert Oracle Radio. But he did his usual Friday-night stint at the Z107.7 FM mic anyway, and you can catch the podcast of same at all the usual places.

“Some people say you should not do your radio show when you’re sick in the head. But I am not one of those people,” he explains.

Layne is waiting for Hurricane Hilary to visit the Mojave — it’s something new for a lot of the local desert rats, but as an old Nawlins hand he knows a little something about rigging for heavy weather.

This week’s episode is heavy on advice for riding out the storm. But he also recounts his bout with The Bug, a random prowler testing his door, and the apparent death and resurrection of a big ol’ spiny desert lizard who is a regular on his patio (but not the radio show).

“Be careful, friends,” Layne advises, adding, “And once you’re prepared, it’s time to hunker down. Enjoy the excitement — nobody ever says that on the weather report — but it’s exciting. It’s real life, it’s right here. No Netflix necessary.”

No excitement for us here in The Duck! City — Hilary will be giving us a miss — but we might catch a little wind burn from her passage. I guess it’s Netflix for us. How about you?

Between essence and descent

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 12 Comments
Shadow descending.

You can’t go wrong with a good T.S. Eliot reference.

Hunter S. Thompson, whose larger-than-life shadow often fell between the idea and the reality, was fond of quoting “The Hollow Men.”

Francis Ford Coppola gave a strong nod to that one as well, along with “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” in “Apocalypse Now.”

Crash Test Dummies likewise put “Prufrock” to work, in “Afternoons & Coffeespoons.”

Lately, of course, the news is distinctly more William Butler Yeatsish, with things falling apart, mere anarchy loosed on the world, and the worst filled with passionate intensity.

It all makes me wish I’d paid more (which is to say “some”) attention during my high-school English classes. And that some other, more prominent slackers had gotten more out of history and civics.

Post holes

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 19 Comments
Taking the long view between hill repeats.

I knew my internal scribe was out walking a picket line with the Writers Guild of America when I considered titling a blog post “Maui wowie.”

Clever? Maybe. Funny? Most definitely not.

It’s been a bit of a rough patch for an old newsie who doesn’t give a fiddler’s fart about Barbie, the Iowa State Fair, Taylor Swift, a fish-slapping dance involving Zuck and Schmuck, Hunter Biden, or the latest freakout over artificial intelligence. (Texting Jesus? Seriously? Dude’s only been Holy Ghosting you people for a couple thousand years.)

We’re just 13 days into August and already I’m being served Halloween-related ads as I shamble around the Internets in search of inspiration.

But I’m having trouble envisioning anything more horrific than getting chased into the ocean by the deadliest American wildfire in more than a century and hearing later that some blogger made a lame joke about it.

Just a sec; gotta block this Jesus dude. He wants to know why the poor sods in Lahaina didn’t just walk to the mainland instead of jumping into the sea.

“That’s what I’da done,” he texts.

“Not with those holes in your feet,” I reply. “You’re not seaworthy anymore, skipper. More leaks than Ginger Hitler’s White House.”

Hah. Nailed it.