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.

Kibboleth

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 15 Comments
I had one of these back in 2001. I got all the strength training I needed pushing the sonofabitch when it broke down.

Top-shelf “van life?” Four-figure “smart” strength-training equipment?

Betimes one wonders whether The New York Times ping-pongs back and forth between Manhattan and San Fran without paying much attention to what’s in between.

Clearly, what Joe and Jane Sixpack are crying out for in Middle America is a Mercedes-Benz Sprinter with a factory-installed Tonal.

Either that or, y’know, like, a Bug vaccine, dinner with friends, and maybe a fucking job.

Let’s ask Studs Terkel, shall we?

I want to go home

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 18 Comments
Vote early, vote often.

Omen? Maybe. When Sleepy Joe and Nasty Kamala took the stage in Delaware, KUNM was playing “The Sloop John B.”

Let me go home
Why don’t they let me go home
This is the worst trip I’ve ever been on

Worst. Trip. Ever.

There’s your ticket. It may not be progressives’ idea of Disneyland, but compared to “Pirates of Mar-a-Lago” it looks pretty Magic fuckin’ Kingdom to me.

So let’s take the ride. Biden-Harris 2020.

All in the family

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 15 Comments
“Albuquerque Journal, mister? Fresh from Santa Fe!”

I almost missed this in the hubbub over “Nasty” Kamala joining “Sleepy” Joe atop the Communist … pardon, Democratic Party ticket.

The Albuquerque Journal and The New Mexican have announced an agreement to print their publications in Santa Fe.

Both papers are family-owned, which is an honest-to-God miracle in the modern era. And their newsrooms will remain separate and independent.

The idea, of course, is to enhance efficiency. Just ask ’em:

Robin Martin, president of The New Mexican, and William P. Lang, president of the Journal, collaborated and determined the two production facilities, just 50 miles apart, could operate more efficiently as a single operation.

They obviously didn’t collaborate with a copy editor on that paragraph. But still, the point limps across.

And you don’t have to be a president to know what the word “efficiency” means: layoffs! As in up to 70 positions in Albuquerque.

So, come mid-October, when and if the snow flies, Duke City subscribers may be draining their second cup of joe — or even on lunch break — before the blat hits the driveway. But hey, that’s efficiency for you.

Extry, extry, readallaboudit!

Executive ordure

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 22 Comments
“Nah, that’s not chicken shit. That’s chicken salad. Enjoy!”

The U.S. Constitution is a poor defense against a ruthless huckster hellbent on selling snake oil to the rubes.

“No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriation made by Law. …”

“Fuck you. Sue me. And guess who pays for the lawyers?”