Month: October 2025

Humbugs and gasbags

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments
The Wizard of Ooze. (Behind the curtain: Stephen Miller, Generalfeldmarschall, Twatwaffen SS.)

You will recall that Professor Marvel, a.k.a. the Wizard of Oz, traveled by gasbag.

His very distant cousin in humbuggery, the Wizard of Ooze, likewise gets around on hot air, with an assist from other people’s money.

But I don’t expect we’ll see him at the 2025 Albuquerque International Balloon Festival, which begins today. Oh, sure, there’s a golf center at Balloon Fiesta Park, with a driving range and a six-hole pitch-and-putt course. But there is a distinct lack of screening foliage and even the most myopic of Repuglicunts could see him improving his lie.

The Great and Powerful Ooze might send the ICEholes in his stead (darn those bone spurs!). What a fine addition to the spectacle that would be — fats with tats in masks and battle-rattle snatching up brown people and stuffing them into locked baskets beneath unmarked black balloons, to be spirited away to Kansas or someplace even worse, flanked by escorts of flying monkeys.

But I expect those boyos are busy too, lumbering after nekkid bike riders in Stumptown or the more easily caught deep-dish pizza in Chicago.

Eat up, fellas! And don’t worry about the legs on the black olives. Ramón says they’re free-range. Organic.

‘Vengeance is mine,” sayeth The Lard

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 6 Comments
Cucurbita clamantis in deserto.

The ever-vengeful Pumpkinhead has croaked $135 million worth of energy projects in the Land of Enchantment, part of his Punishment Tour of the Blue States.

A spokescreature for the Department of Energy said it had decided these projects did not “adequately advance the nation’s energy needs, were not economically viable, and would not provide a positive return on investment of taxpayer dollars.”

As one might expect, Sen. Ben Ray Luján, a Democrat, sees things differently.

“Let me be clear: President Trump is using his own shutdown as a tool for political retribution — targeting energy projects that create good-paying jobs and help lower costs for families. The president is taking jobs away from hardworking New Mexicans and jacking up costs for New Mexico families.”

The New Mexican‘s story wanders off to describe a few other effects of the federal-government shutdown on our fair state, from thousands of furloughs to unpaid salaries to parks left unattended and vulnerable to vandalism.

Well, the rest of the country has been left unattended and vulnerable to vandalism since Jan. 20. Why should the parks be any different?

Yippie!

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 15 Comments

Remember the Yippies? Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, et al.?

The wildmen who lit up the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago may have a descendant in the City of the Big Shoulders — a cyclist who gave the old razzle-dazzle to La Migra and seems to have gotten away scot free. (A tip of the Mad Dog Red Zinger cap goes out to Digby and Tom Sullivan.)

I emailed Grant Peterson about getting him a sponsorship through Rivendell Bicycle Works — a Charlie Gallop would be just the thing for Charlie Hustle there — but no deal so far.

Now if we can just get this dude to run a pig for president. No, not that pig. Some honorable swine, like Pigasus the Immortal.

Fear and Loathing in Woody Creek

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ Leave a comment
“Now it’s the same old song / but with a different meaning since you’ve been gone. …”

From our You Have Got to be Fucking Shitting Me Department:

The Colorado Bureau of Investigation is conducting a case review into Hunter S. Thompson’s death, more than 20 years after the fabled Gonzo journalist died in 2005 in his Woody Creek home.

The review was launched following a request from Thompson’s widow, Anita, and is being conducted to “provide an independent perspective” on the 2005 investigation, a CBI spokesperson said Tuesday. 

An “independent perspective,” hey? The Good Doktor had that and then some, for sure. Maybe some other poor fool in Pitkin County finally saw those goddamn bats.

Sex and violence

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 7 Comments
Rough trade.

Two thoughts this morning. The first, from P.J. O’Rourke in his book, “Parliament of Whores.”

Republicans are the party that says government doesn’t work, and then they get elected and prove it.

The second, from Tom Nichols at The Atlantic, in his essay, “The Commander in Chief Is Not Okay.”

In 1973, an Air Force nuclear-missile officer named Harold Hering asked a simple question during a training session: “How can I know that an order I receive to launch my missiles came from a sane president?” The question cost him his career. Military members are trained to execute orders, not question them. But today, both the man who can order the use of nuclear arms and the man who would likely verify such an order gave disgraceful and unnerving performances in Quantico. How many officers left the room asking themselves Major Hering’s question?

Discuss.