He's a walkin' contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction.
Author: Patrick O'Grady
After decades with his scabby little nose pressed to various grindstones of journalism, Patrick O'Grady came away with plenty of mental scar tissue, a good deal less hair to cover it, and an undiminished appreciation for three subsets of the craft: drawing cartoons, writing commentary, and composing headlines. All three are short, punchy attention-getters, the literary equivalent of yelling, "Hey, look at me!" before hanging a moon out the school-bus window, and thus own a natural appeal for an overgrown class clown with the attention span of a rat terrier raised on angel dust and bong water. And thanks to the Internet, the best thing to happen to journalism since the invention of movable type, he gets to do all three of them without having to go to work at a newspaper, where management has slowly devolved into a button-down mutant hybrid of the worst aspects of the Spanish Inquisition, the dental bits in "Marathon Man" and the DMV of your choice. He and his wife, the long-suffering Shannon, share an adobe hacienda in The Duck! City with their cat, Miss Mia Sopaipilla.
Forget about those nagging short-term problems like epidemic idiocy, creeping fascism, and the future of the Republic — what the hell’s happening with water?
And which of the three stories below do you think will get the most “likes” on Facebutt?
Shit, I forgot to squeeze a little lemon in my water. I guess I won’t live forever.
• Beauty and the boost: Hydrate your way to health! If you can find water, and can afford it once you do. Just don’t forget the lemon, dipshit.
Meanwhile, just because, here’s “There Stands the Glass,” as covered by Half Man Half Biscuit. It starts at 6:15, but you should probably listen to the other bits that precede it. Get yeer full glass mate!
Our segment kicks off about 33 minutes into the show. Steve Frothingham, editor in chief of Bicycle Retailer and Industry News, gets things rolling with a discussion of the year just past in the bike biz and what we might expect in 2021.
Thanks to Diane for giving the Padre, Charles, and me a little corner of her chat room. You can give us a listen by clicking here.
The sun prepares its New Year’s debut over the Sandias.
The starter’s pistol cracks, the flag drops … and they’re off! Another lap around the calendar has begun.
Herself and I called it quits long before midnight after a New Year’s Eve feast of Alaskan salmon (h/t Matt Wiebe), roasted potatoes, steamed broccoli, and salad. French rosé for her; fake St. Pauli Girl for me, my Clausthaler Dry Hopped being unavailable anywhere at any price.
The celebratory pyrotechnics likewise beat the clock. I was hearing fireworks and gunfire 8-ish as I unplugged the holiday lights. Burqueños do love their pistolas, and will discharge them at the sky if no other, better target presents itself.
This continued into the night until a final, furious fusillade awakened me and 2021 more or less simultaneously.
This morning I checked the property for bodies, but found nothing, no shell casings, no blood trails. Herself inspected the Vault and found a deposit of $1,200 from Uncle Sammy, that senile, profligate, racist old fool. We are not wealthy, but neither are we desperate, and so we will be redirecting these funds to someone who is. What a colossal waste of time and energy. Somebody could have been spending this cash months ago on food, rent, cartuchos, whatever.
Meanwhile, the Sedition Party is gearing up for more mischief at King’s Landing. This is the thing that never changes with the calendar. In power, they can’t govern, won’t even try. Out of power, they see to it that nobody else can govern, either. This is why small businesses close and public works crumble and people like us get free money.
And yet every New Year’s Eve the People spill out into the streets, shooting into the heavens. One wonders when they might choose some other targets of opportunity down here on earth.
While we wait, anybody making New Year’s resolutions that don’t involve overthrowing the government? Sound off in comments.
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